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CURIOSITIES 



OF 



OUR EARLY HISTORY. 



to &<-*<* 



the 



ROMANCE OF 



AMERICAN HISTORY 



EARLY ANNALS 



M. SCHEIE I)E VERE. 




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<Ls 



NEW YORK: 
G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, 

4TII AVE. & 23d ST. 



LONDON : SAMPSON, LOW & CO. 

18 7 2. 



£777 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

PUTNAM & SONS, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

PAGB 

Lo the Pooh Indian !..... 1 

II. 

The Hidden River . . . . , .3.3 

III. 

Our First Romance . . . . . 69 

IV. 
A Few Town-Names ...... 101 

V. 
Kaisers, Kings and Knights .... 11") 

VI. 
Lost Towns . . . . . . .187 

VII. 

Lost Lands. ... ... 21(> 



ROMANCE 



OF 



AMERICAN HISTORY 




LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 
I. 

IOUS Cotton Mather, with his 
heart full of sweetness and his wig 
full of learning, once expressed his 
opinion of the natives of our land 
in these remarkable words : " The 
natives of the country, now pos- 
sessed by the New Englanders, had been forlorn and 
wretched heathen ever since their first herding there, 
and though we know not how and when these Indians first 
became inhabited of this mighty continent, yet we may 
guess that probably the Devil decoyed these miserable 
salvages hither, in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus 
Christ would never reach here, or disturb his absolute 
empire over them. But our Eliot was on such ill terms 
with the Devil as to alarm him with sounding the silver 



2 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

trumpets of heaven in his territory, and was willing to 
rescue as many of them as he could from the old 
usurping Landlord of America, who is, by the wrath of 
God, the prince of this world." The great divine was, no 
doubt, sincerely anxious to blow the same trumpet with 
all the zeal and energy with which he was naturally en- 
dowed, but he neglects to explain to us the plea on 
which his children, the New England ers, carried on their 
traffic with this ill-reputed Landlord, and hesitated not 
to deal with much shrewdness and to good purpose with 
these children of the Devil. It has been suggested that 
they thought it but right to ruin and to destroy the 
tenants of the Evil One, so as to gain room for a better 
generation, and they themselves more than once quote 
the example of the Jews spoiling the Egyptians, as a 
precedent for their own policy. 

This charitable view of the parentage of the poor 
Indian, and of his relations to Satan, were however at 
one time entertained very generally by learned divines. 
Thus we find the first biblical scholar of his age, Dr. 
Joseph Meade, writing in 1634 these words: "The 
Devil, being impatient of the sound of the Gospel and 
the Cross of Christ in every part of this old world, so that 
he could in no place be quiet for it, and foreseeing 
that he was like at length to lose, all here, bethought 
himself to provide him of a seed, over which he might 
reign securely. He accordingly drew a colony out of 
some of those barbarous nations, dwelling upon the ocean, 
whether the sound of the Gospel had not yet come, and 



LO ! THE TOOR INDIAN. 3 

promising then by some oracle to show them a country- 
far better than their own, pleasant and large, where man 
never yet inhabited, he conducted them over those desert 
lands and isles by the way of the North into America. 
And there did the Devil ever reign more absolutely and 
without control since mankind first fell under his clutches." 
It is hard to imagine why the poor race of red men, 
already so unmistakably doomed to destruction, should 
have been denounced, in addition, as the offspring of Satan 
and his own peculiar people. The sons of the pilgrims 
evidently needed no such argument to enforce their pol- 
icy : when the Indian resisted, they had a right to smite 
him hip and thigh ; when disease destroyed him and his 
children in their sight, the Lord showed them by His dis- 
pensation that the land was cleared for their benefit, and 
if a good bargain in land could be had they were ready 
to pay a fair price in boots, bumbo, and Bibles. 

There is some comfort, therefore, in a kindly sug- 
gestion made by Dr. Twiss, afterwards Prolocutor of the 
Westminster Assembly, when replying to Dr. Meade's 
above mentioned letter : " Considering our English plan- 
tations of late, and the opinions of many grave divines 
concerning the Gospel's fleeting westwards sometimes, 
I have had such thoughts : why may not this be the 
place of New Jerusalem ? " He does not deny the 
Satanic descent of the poor Indians ; on the contrary, to 
him also they are sons of Belial and " children of per- 
dition," but at least he does not speak of the Devil as 
our Landlord and absolute ruler. We may reasonably- 



4 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

hope, therefore, that the whole doctrine of Satanic origin 
rested only upon a desire to increase the zeal for their con- 
version and to deepen the sympathy for their unhappy 
condition. 

The warm heart of brave Captain Smith, ever over- 
flowing with kindly feeling for the poor salvages, and lead- 
ing him, out of his scanty means, to set aside ^200 for 
their conversion, saw in them, not the children of the 
Devil, not at least an accursed race. When in the month 
of April, 1 6 14, with two ships from London he (I) 
" chanced to arrive in New England, a part of Ameryca," 
he fell in with the Indians there, and whether they struck 
him as different from the Powhatans of his beloved Vir- 
ginia, or merely recalled to him early impressions, he 
stated that " some conceive the inhabitants of New 
England to be Ham's posterity, and consequently shut 
out from grace by Noah's curse till the conversion of the 
Jews be past at least." 

It is certainly not a little curious that this idea of a 
Jewish origin of our native neighbors should have so 
often recurred to the minds of early discoverers, even 
where no previous impression of the kind could have 
prepared them for such a notion. William Penn, it is 
well-known, adopted the view that they were of Jewish 
origin ; and at the South, the same opinion has been en- 
tertained by men well acquainted, through personal inter- 
course, with all their peculiarities. 

Thus James Adair, an Englishman of learning and 
great enterprise, who lived f :r more than thirty years 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 5 

among the Chickasaws, and had frequent intercourse with 
the Cherokees, Choctaw, and Muscogees, published in 
1775 a work on American Indians, in which he proved 
himself well acquainted with Hebrew, and, as was to be 
expected, a perfect master of various Indian idioms. He 
was firmly convinced that the red men of the South, at 
least, were the descendants of one of the lost tribes of 
Israel, who had preserved, with the exception of circum- 
cision, all the leading features of old testamentary wor- 
ship. He had found among them the name of Jehovah 
but slightly altered, and attributed to the one supreme 
God ; he had recognized in their religious chants a dis- 
tinct hallelujah, and had seen, with his own eyes, a 
grand temple of theirs, to which the tribes came up in 
their order, where priests presented burnt offerings and 
thanks offerings, and even a Holy of Holies. His con- 
victions were reiterated by a man who seemed to be still 
better qualified to judge of the curious question, — Abram 
Mordecai, himself a Jew, and a man of equal intelligence 
and learning, who spent fifty years of his life among the 
Creeks, and, as late as the year 1847, expressed his firm 
belief that the latter were members of the same race to 
which he also belonged. 

A very clever German, Gerard de Brahm, who was 
long " Surveyor for the Southern District of America," 
much addicted to alchemy, but remarkably shrewd in 
all other matters of worldly interest, also spent a large 
portion of his life, from 1756 to 177 1, among these 
Southern Indians, and, strangely enough, came to the 



6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

same conclusion. He went even farther than the Eng- 
lish authors in tracing their descent, for he claimed for 
his special friends, the Cherokees, an unbroken pedigree 
from no less a personage than Noah's son, Japhet He 
maintained that the silence observed in Holy Writ as to 
all the sons of Japhet, with the exception of the oldest, 
proved their having, at an early period of history, absented 
themselves from the rest of Noah's generations. The 
fact that the Pentateuch makes no mention at all of what 
became of Magog and his four brothers, and only speaks 
of them as hunters, pursuing their father's favorite pas- 
sion, appears to him sufficient proof that they must have 
strayed away to remote parts of the earth, from whence 
neither history nor tradition could reach those who re- 
mained in Assyria. These wandering hunters, sons of 
the man who was told that he should " dwell in tents," and 
brothers of him who " dissolves," were in all probability 
cut off from the European continent in the time of Peleg, 
the son of Noah's grandson, when the world, according 
to sacred history, was " separated." Why he should have 
counted in only his special friends and neighbors 
among the children of Magog, the eccentric German does 
not tell us ; but without hesitation he adds that the 
Southern Indians are evidently descendants of the ancient 
Carthaginians, who, in their days, as the great merchants 
of the universe, discovered by their trading vessels many 
islands and sent colonies to improve them. Probably 
some of these vessels, in pursuit of their discovery, recog- 
nizing the more Southern shore, fell in with the trade- 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 7 

winds, and, not experienced in sailing upon the wind, were 
blown into the Gulf of Mexico, while the Carthaginian 
navigators carried with them the knowledge of conveying 
their history to posterity by hieroglyphics, /rom which the 
Northern Indians have learned to leave their particular 
adventures and martial exploits with red and black on 
trees nearest by as evidences of the truth." 

Nor is this idea of a Jewish origin confined to the 
earlier days of our history. Richard Peters, a gentle- 
man of superior intelligence and high character, who, for 
various reasons, had been intimately acquainted with 
several tribes of Indians, and become especially so en- 
deared to the Tuscaroras as to be adopted by them under 
the name of Tegochtias, the Paroquet, entertained the 
same views, based upon careful inquiry and personal 
knowledge. " If they are of Israelitish descent, it is in 
the decrees of Providence," he says, " that, like all other 
Jews, they must be homeless wanderers, dispersed 
throughout all the regions of the earth. Even now, in our 
day (1825), a portion of these copper-colored Ishmaelites, 
if so they be, are to be compelled to wander far away and 
leave their cultivated fields." The argument sounds as 
if taken from one of those fanatic sermons by which, in 
the early middle ages, zealous priests endeavored to arouse 
their hearers to a crusade against the poor Jews of Ger- 
many. The effect is, certainly, if not so immediate, quite 
as unfailing. 

After having thus been denounced as the children of 
Satan, and homeless descendants of an accursed race, 



8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

the poor red men of our continent can, with stoic indiffer- 
ence, bear all other genealogies, which have been pro- 
vided for them by learned and unlearned men. What 
can it matter to them, whether they are endowed by self- 
constituted Herald's Colleges with ancestors from Iceland 
or from Japan ? They might easily retort that, as this 
continent, the New World, is beyond all doubt the Old 
World by eminence, and dates back from times long an- 
terior to the annals of Europe at least, so their race also 
may perhaps have a pedigree far older than the Rohans 
of France, who accompanied Noah into his ark. Or they 
can, if so inclined, accept Agassiz's theory, which gives 
them a first father of their own, an Adam who deserves 
his name of the red one far more truly than the familiar 
first man of our schools. 

On the other hano^ we find missionaries especially 
inclined to attribute their want of success among the 
Indians to some occult element in their character. For 
it is a remarkable fact that the efforts of the most pious 
and most zealous men at the North and in the South 
have remained equally sterile. We need only recall such 
truly great men as the Apostle of the Indians, his brethren 
of New England, and the noble host of martyrs among 
the Moravians, from a Mayhew and a Loskiel down to our 
own day. " Loskiel could not change the Indian char- 
acter," says Bancroft, curtly but sadly. All traces of 
Eliot's labors disappeared with himself. "Not one 
Indian Christian was gathered by the English missiona- 
ries in Connecticut," says Trumbull in his history of that 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 9 

State. One of the most striking instances of such a failure 
of permanent conversion was the island known as Martha's 
Vineyard. Discovered in May, 1602, its inhabitants had, 
in less than fifty years, "embraced Christianity and adop- 
ted English manners and customs in husbandry and other 
concerns," thanks to the indefatigable labors of the noble 
Mayhews. 

In 1660 there were about three thousand Christian 
Indians on the island, with ministers of their own race — 
and a generation later, the whole had vanished like a 
dream ! Nor was it otherwise among other tribes. The 
pathetic stories of Praying Indians, the terrible massacres 
of Cherry Valley and of Wyoming, and the martyrdom 
of con verts in Moravian settlements, all speak loudly in 
behalf of the efforts made to convert the red man — all 
point as clearly to the inefficiency of these attempts. 
Virginia in vain opened her schools and colleges to her 
Indians ; Penn the Quaker, and Oglethorpe the Philan- 
thropist, tried in vain to win them over by kindness and 
unremitting solicitations. There are, no doubt, commu- 
nities, and perhaps even tribes like the Christian Chero- 
kees, who have adopted Christianity as they have accepted 
the benefits of civilization ; but the race as such was 
never converted, though living in a Christian land, and 
by the side of such grateful examples we have pointed 
out to us other tribes dwelling in our midst and still of- 
fering sacrifices to their idols and practising all the abom- 
inations of their forefathers. 

It cannot be denied that as long as the Indian is a 



IO ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

nomad, so long will he also remain a heathen. And will 
he ever cease to be a wanderer over the surface of the 
earth ? In a question so closely affecting the most power- 
ful interests of a great nation, it is very difficult to ascer- 
tain the truth. Indian commissioners, unbiassed travel- 
lers, pious missionaries, all differ in the most startling 
manner, when their opinion on this subject is asked. To 
the one, nothing appears simpler than to tame the Indian ; 
to the other, he is a genuine wild asses colt. 

One feature, however, in the Indian's character is too 
well proven to be questioned. This is the irresistible 
charm which the wild life of the plains and the woods has 
ever had for those even among them who have had the 
sweets of civilization, and have fully acquired the habits 
of refined society. Examples are not wanting, from the 
earliest days of our colonial life to comparatively recent 
days. When Virginia was still in her infancy she estab- 
lished a college " for educating infidel children in the 
knowledge of the true God," and added to it, at a little dis- 
tance from Henrico, an East India school for Indians espe- 
cially. Her efforts were blasted by the terrible massacre of 
1622, when all the white settlers of the colony, save a hand- 
ful, were butchered in cold blood. But undismayed, she 
went to work once more, and soon a University of Henrico 
was laid off, which was " intended as well for a college for 
the education of Indians, as also to lay the foundation 
of a seminary of learning for the English " (Stith. Vir- 
ginia, p. 163). A third attempt was made when the 
College of William and Mary was established at Williams- 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. II 

burg, but with what success ? We have the report of a 
contemporary : "And here I must lament the bad suc- 
cess Mr. Boyle's charity has hitherto had towards con- 
verting any of those poor heathens to Christianity. Many 
children of our Indian neighbors have been brought up 
in the College of William and Mary. They have been 
taught to read and write, and been carefully instructed in 
the principles of the Christian religion, till they came to 
the age of manhood. Yet, after they returned home, in- 
stead of converting and civilizing the rest, they have im- 
mediately relapsed into barbarism and infidelity them- 
selves." And this is the invariable result. At a later 
period Governor Spotswood also sent a certain number 
of children, the sons of the great men of several Indian 
tribes, who had been taken as hostages during the war in 
South Carolina, to William and Mary College. They 
were taught, they were converted, and when they returned 
to their homes they resumed the blanket, and with it all 
the habits of their heathen brethren ! In another part 
of Virginia, a Mr. Charles Griffin, a man of good family, 
of immaculate character and great sweetness of temper, 
was placed as schoolmaster among the Sappon's Indians, 
and devoted himself for years with matchless zeal and 
judicious energy to the task of educating them and pre- 
paring them for civilized life. All the pains he took had 
but the effect " to make them somewhat cleanlier than the 
other Indians," as we are told in Col. William Byrd's in- 
teresting Journal. The latter naively adds that the only 
way to civilize and Christianize Indians is to intermarry 



12 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

with them, concluding with this quaint remark : " It is 
strange that any good Christian should have refused a 
wholesome, straight bedfellow, when he might have so 
fair a portion with her as the merit of saving her soul." 
Still another school at Christina, on the Nottoway River, 
where, at one time, seventy Indian children were daily 
taught in a handsome school-house, specially built for their 
benefit, ended in the same disastrous manner. They 
could train the Indian's mind, but they seemed to be un- 
able to change his heart. 

Nor were individual efforts more successful. As 
early as the year 1659, an English merchant, John Beau- 
champ, obtained permission from the General Assembly 
of Virginia, to carry his Indian boy " into England, pro- 
vided that, at the County Court in Charles City County, 
he make it appear that he hath the consent of the said 
Indian boy's parents soe to doe " (Heming's Reports I. p. 
546). He obtained the required consent, he took the 
boy to his house in England and gave him an excellent 
education. Young Beauchamp, as he was called after his 
benefactor, returned a grown man to the colony, went to 
visit his brethren on the upper waters of the Dan — and 
never returned, sending only yearly messages of kindness 
and good-will to his friends among the English. 

General Oglethorpe also took, in 1743, an Indian boy, 
the son of one of the greatest chiefs in Georgia, with him 
to England, animated by an earnest desire to make him, 
at any expense and by every effort on his part, a fit in- 
strument to carry the advantages of civilization and the 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 



13 



blessings of Christianity to his unfortunate brethren. 
The youth received a liberal education, the best that 
England could afford in those days, and became a polished 
man, moving freely in the best society and perfectly at 
home in all the details even of courtly life. He then 
went back to his tribe, the Creeks, and great were the 
expectations of his noble old friend, and high the hopes 
of all who wished well to the Indians, when he parted 
with them at Savannah. A fine portrait of General Ogle- 
thorpe, with his young Indian friend standing in an af- 
fectionate attitude by his side, commemorated the event, 
and was long kept in the Garden City of the South, till 
the British captured the town in 1778, and destroyed the 
picture. But the result was the same sad disappoint- 
ment. In a short time the accomplished courtier became 
a wily Indian once more ; he laid aside his European 
costume, and with it the habits he had acquired in Eng- 
land, and before a short year had passed he had become 
an Indian warrior once more in the full and most pain- 
ful sense of the word. 

The French also tried the experiment more than once. 
Their first effort already, though not without its whimsical 
features, ended in the most disastrous manner. A young, 
gallant Frenchman had been sent up to the mouth of the 
Missouri to purchase land there and to erect a fort, which 
he was to hold with a small garrison. He found himself 
surrounded there by Indians on all sides, and to while 
away his time during an interval of peace, he filled their 
minds with glowing pictures of French life, and excited 



14 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

their imagination to the utmost by vivid accounts of the 
splendor of his sovereign's court. When they were 
wrought up to the highest point he took advantage of the 
excitement to bribe, by means of promises and presents, 
eleven principal men, together with the fair daughter of 
the chief of a tribe, to accompany him to France. They 
sailed merrily down the great river ; they rested a few 
weeks at New Orleans, where the beautiful princess with 
her strange retinue created much excitement, and then 
embarked for Europe. Such a novelty as an Indian 
princess, accompanied by eleven full-plumed savages in 
all their war-paint, was a most welcome event to the weary 
Parisians, and the novel embassy was received with much 
pomp, and actually invited to appear at court. Even the 
honor of being presented to the king's majesty, however, 
does not seem to have exempted the poor Indians from 
the necessity of catering to the curiosity of the Parisians ; 
they were made to hunt deer in the Bois de Boulogne 
after their own fashion of the western prairies, and at 
the Italian Theatre to exhibit their national dances. In 
the meantime the priests had been busy with the royal 
lady, and great was the delight of the populace when on 
a fine summer day a double ceremony was announced to 
take place in the great Cathedral of Notre Dame. The 
Indian princess, as she was always styled, was solemnly 
received into the bosom of the Christian Church in the 
morning, and in the afternoon married to a Sergeant 
Dubois, who had accompanied the strange travellers, and 
was now, as a reward for his success, made an officer and ap- 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 



*5 



pointed " Commander of the Missouris." The excitement 
was intense. Church and State alike looked forward to the 
great advantages that were to be derived from such an alli- 
ance of the daughter of a great Indian chieftain with a 
Frenchman, and their united influence over a great and 
powerful nation. All the court-ladies brought rich pres- 
ents for the happy couple, and the King himself deigned 
to add new favors. The eleven warriors appeared in new 
blue coats covered with gold lace, and hats adorned with 
plumes and gorgeous cockades, while the lucky author 
of the enterprise was made a knight of St. Louis, married 
a rich widow, and quietly remained in France thereafter. 
Mr. and Mrs. Dubois, with their suite, were then sent 
back in great state on board a national vessel, and when 
they reached New Orleans well-cared for and hospitably 
entertained by the agents of Law's famous though ill-fated 
Mississippi company, with a view to future trading ad- 
vantages on the upper river. The company also furnished 
them with a ship to reach their distant homes ; an armed 
guard was detailed to accompany them, and amid loud 
shouts and enthusiastic cheers they left the city. But 
still greater was the joy and still louder the enthusiasm 
when, after a long and tedious voyage, they reached at 
last the home of their brethren, the Missouris. There 
was no end of rejoicing and feasting to celebrate the 
return of the chieftain's daughter and the eleven doughty 
warriors, and when the vessel turned once more south- 
ward every heart was full of hope and every mind busy 
with the vast profit that France was to reap from this 



1 6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

cunning measure. Alas ! the ship was barely out of 
sight when the princess reappeared in all the touching 
simplicity of her national costume, and that very night her 
husband and the whole little garrison were cruelly butch- 
ered ! " Thus, this post no longer exists," adds plain- 
tively the chronicles of the tragic event. — (Dumont 
Mem. Hist, sur la Louisiane II. p. 78.) 

A similar effort made at a much later period by no 
less a personage than General Lafayette, ended less 
tragically, but in a manner equally disheartening. He 
had taken an infant son of Corn Planter, chief of one of 
the so-called Six Nations, to France with him, principally 
for the purpose of testing the capacity of his race for 
moral improvement. The best masters were provided, 
the highest society opened its doors, and no effort was 
spared to make the young chieftain an accomplished man 
of the world. When he reached manhood there seemed 
to be nothing more wanting to his education ; he satisfied 
the most fastidious taste in his manners and his principles, 
and finally he even won the affections of a beautiful 
woman, who married him with the consent of her friends 
and relations. With her he returned to this country. 
" He was about twenty-six years of age, of an active genius, 
and very friendly to the United States," says a newspaper 
of that day, — the American Apollo of Boston. On the 
morning of his arrival he was visited by many prominent 
men who had been interested in the young man and his 
mission ; they found him all they had been led to expect — . 
a gay but elegant Frenchman, with all the marks of good 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. \J 

breeding in speech and in manners. When he returned 
at night to his hotel the powder and the silk stockings 
had vanished, he was half drunk, and nearly unconscious 
of what he had been doing. The next day, however, he 
declared his intention to accompany some Indians, whom 
he had met in the streets, to their home ; they happened 
to be men of his own tribe, Oneidas, and had been on a 
visit to the Government of the United States. When 
next seen he was surrounded by them, brutally drunk and 
wrapped in a blanket ; he returned with his newly-found 
brethren, leaving his loving wife on the way, cruelly 
abused and stripped of her property. Thus she was 
found by Aaron Burr as he was travelling from Canada 
to New York ; almost naked and subsisting on berries % 
and wild fruit. The young chieftain disappeared in his 
native forests for nearly three years ; then he was sud- 
denly seen once more in the streets of Philadelphia, a 
miserable wreck, debauched and disfigured almost be- 
yond recognition, and before help could be extended to 
him, he died there in 1792. — (The American Apollo, 
Boston 1792.) 

Startling as these well authenticated examples of red 
men are, who could not be weaned from their true nature 
by all the wiles and blandishments of civilization, there 
is greater wonder still in the apparently rresistible charm 
which Indian life has had for white men, who have once 
fallen under the influence of its strange attractions. The 
hope of Governor Spotswood, that intermarriage between 
the two races might at last succeed in civilizing the 
2 



1 8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

natives, was unconsciously refuted by an able and care- 
ful observer, the Marquis of Denonville, who, in 1685, 
wrote to the French Government : " It has long been 
believed that it is necessary to mingle with the Indians 
in order to Frenchify (franciser) them. But this is a 
mistake. Those with whom we mingle do not become 
French, but our people become Indians ! " No one, 
who has ever seen the Canadian voyageurs on Northern 
waters, or the now nearly extinct French half-breeds in 
the far west, can doubt the correctness of this assertion. 
This fondness for Indian life is, however, by no means 
limited to the lower classes. No reader of our early 
annals will ever forget the strange story of Colonel 
.Castine, a Frenchman of noble birth, of large fortune and 
brilliant antecedents. For some time commanding the 
regiment of Carignan, his wit and his abilities were such 
as to attract, long afterwards, the admiration of Raynal 
and of Voltaire, both of whom speak of him in terms of 
admiration. All of a sudden, and for reasons which have 
never become known, he determined to leave France and 
to seek a new home in America. Purchasing some land 
on the Penobscot River, he settled down there, married 
the daughter of a chief, and spent the remainder of his 
life with the Indians. His eldest son, " an influential 
sachem with a number of wives, which he had selected 
from the natives " (Sullivan, Maine, p. 258), became the 
bitter enemy of the English. It so happened that a new 
frontier line being drawn in consequence of the Treaty of 
Breda, Castine's seat fell into the patent granted to James 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 1 9 

II. as Duke of York, and this gave a pretext — it is hard to 
tell how — to the commander of an English frigate to 
plunder Castine's house from roof to cellar. The young 
hot-headed half-breed, animated by the double insult 
done to the French nobleman and the Indian Sagamore, 
for he was then chief sachem of the Penobscots, resented 
the brutal injury deeply, and made the English pay dearly 
for the rash measure during many a war to which he in- 
cited the tribes under his control. 

Nor was it by any means Gallic levity alone which 
thus readily fraternized with the red Indian and adopted 
his habits. Even the steady German, most cosmopolitan 
of all nations at home, and the last to lay aside his nation- 
ality abroad, could not resist the strange charm. He was, 
on the contrary, among the very first who appear in the 
annals of our history as having cast in their lot with the 
savages and joined them in times of peace or on the war- 
path. Blunt Captain John Smith does not hesitate to 
speak of some Germans whom he had courteously sent 
to King Powhatan to build him a house after European 
fashion, as "those damned Dutchmen." (Purchas. IV., 
1 72 1.) At first sight they appear to deserve the harsh 
name. For after reaching the " Empereur's " house they 
turned from their English friends, joined the Indians, and 
refused to return or to aid those by whom they had been 
sent. But upon a more careful examination a valid ex- 
cuse is found for their apparent treachery. John Smith 
tells us with a strange unconsciousness of the nature of 
his proposal that he had used the building of a house for 



20 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Powhatan as a pretext, his real aim being to use the Ger- 
mans as spies and auxiliaries in his cunning scheme to 
seize upon the person of the king and to hold him as 
hostage in Jamestown ! The poor " Dutchmen," as they 
were called after the manner of those days, were either 
too honest or too timid to carry out the project; they 
revealed or confessed the plan, and when John Smith 
escaped with the aid of Pocahontas, the Germans were 
forgiven on condition that they should be adopted into 
some Indian families and make their wigwam their home 
for the future. They disappear in the darkness of Indian 
history ; but the charm was as potent thereafter as ever 
before. For only a few years later a Swiss, called Vol- 
day, being sent to bring them home, became himself so 
enchanted with Indian life that he also remained. Only 
one of the Germans, Adams, returned to Jamestown, 
where he received his pardon, although he was probably 
the one whom " the President had placed as a spy upon 
Powhatan, being a man of judgment and resolution, and 
therefore thought most proper." (Stith. Va., p. 86.) A 
couple of others paid dearly for lusting after the fleshpots 
of the red men. " In time of trouble " they went to Pow- 
hatan and promised, that if well received, they would do 
wonders for him upon the arrival of Lord Delaware. But 
the cunning savage said that men so ready to betray John 
Smith would be equally ready to betray him, if they could 
gain anything, and " had their brains beaten out." 

It was more than two generations later when another 
German appears in our annals with the war-paint on his 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 21 

body and the tomahawk in his hand. Though miscalled 
by French writers, who speak of him as Hiens, he bore 
the characteristic name of his nation, Hans, and is called 
" a flibustier whom M. de la Salle had taken to go with him 
on this expedition." (Iontel, redige par M. de IVIichel, 
Paris, 1 7 13, p. 208). He was present when his master, 
the great and rich Governor of the Haramuch, was mur- 
dered in cold blood by a couple of miscreants, one of 
whom, Listot, a surgeon by profession, cried to him as he 
dispatched him : " There you are, grand Bashaw, there you 
are ! " He was shocked and grieved, but helpless, and 
not brave enough to interfere, and when the conspirators 
struck inland, leaving La Salle unburied on the wild 
coast of Texas, and the place of his death unmarked even 
by an humble cross, he timidly followed his brutal com- 
panions as they set out on their famous journey from the 
Gulf of Mexico to the waters of the St. Lawrence. He 
soon disappeared, however, from the pages of their re- 
markable journal. The last that is seen of him is the 
vast outline of his bulky person on horseback rising dim 
and dark against a lowering Western sky, as he accom- 
panied his new friends, the Cenis Indians, on the war- 
path against hostile tribes. Unwilling, as he told Jolitel, 
to return to France merely to have his head taken off by 
a man in a mask, and fortified by a written certificate in 
Latin, that he had taken no share in La Salle's murder, 
he had quietly settled down among the Indians, assumed 
their garb, married a squaw, and secured their respect 
and admiration. Thus exit Hans in 1687. 



22 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Probably the two most remarkable instances of warm 
attachment to Indian life recorded in our history are 
those of a Jesuit and of a New England minister's daugh- 
ter, the one in the far South of the present Union, the 
other in the home of the Puritans. 

In the year 1736 there appeared among the Chero- 
kees and their allies one of the most extraordinary per- 
sons that has ever threatened the peace and security of 
our land. This was a small, wiry man, whose open 
countenance looked all candor and kindness, while his 
eyes fairly shone with intelligence and seemed to have 
the power to search the hearts of man to their innermost 
recesses. No one could have guessed at his nationality, 
for he had in all respects adopted the Indian costumes 
and observed their peculiarities down to the minutest 
detail. Painted in the strange manner of a medicine man, 
covered from head to foot with dangling teeth and tails 
and toes of every brute and beast of the forest, he ate and 
drank and danced like the most fanatic of Indian con- 
jurors. At the same time he discreetly used his superior 
knowledge so as not to shock his Indian brethren by any 
assumption of pride, and yet rendering himself eminently 
useful to them in times of war and of peace. No wonder, 
therefore, that he soon obtained an almost absolute sway 
over the minds of the Cherokees and other neighboring 
tribes, and availed himself of this strangely won power to 
indulge in his deadly hatred of the English. His influ- 
ence grew stronger from day to day ; his insulting mes- 
sages sent to the colonial authorities became more and 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 23 

more intolerable, and at last South Carolina dispatched a 
Colonel Fox to arrest this dangerous person. The Eng- 
lish officer was courteously received as a " beloved man," 
and solemnly led to the great square before the Council 
House of the tribe ; there he saw, to his dismay, the mys- 
terious person whom he had come to arrest, treated on all 
sides with unbounded respect and surrounded by a power- 
ful body-guard. He was allowed to make known his errand ; 
the farce of a solemn council to deliberate on the message 
was performed, and then the " beloved man " was advised 
to withdraw instantly, while the formidable stranger, with 
cutting irony, placed some of his guards at his disposal. It 
seems, however, that gradually he became over-secure in 
his self-conceit, and thus, in the year 1744, he started on 
his way to Mobile, accompanied only by a few Cherokee 
warriors and unarmed. He was recognized by some 
settlers on his path, captured by them, and carried to the 
Fort of Frederica, where General Oglethorpe was then 
residing. 

When he was brought up for examination, the British 
officers found, to their utmost amazement, under the 
hideous paint and the coarse and fantastic dress of deer- 
skin and Indian mocassins, a man of the most polished 
address and the highest abilities. He spoke Latin and 
French, English and Spanish to perfection, and seemed 
to be equally familiar with all the dialects of Southern 
Indian tribes. Nor did he for a moment hesitate to make 
known his history or to avow his purposes. He was a 
German, Christian Preber, a member of the Society of 



24 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Jesus, and had been sent by his superior to the Indians 
of South Carolina. Here he had speedily conceived the 
plan of forming at Cupeta, a part of Georgia still held by 
the Cherokees, a grand rallying place for discontented 
Europeans, fugitives from English justice, deserters from 
French garrisons, and starving Germans escaping from 
unsuccessful settlements, and runaway negroes. To all 
of these he offered here an asylum and the means of 
livelihood till they could be employed in his great enter- 
prise. This was nothing less than to form a vast confed- 
eration of all the Southern Indians, to inspire them with 
the love of industry, to instruct them in the arts and handi- 
craft of civilized life, and thus, at the proper time, to en- 
able them to throw off the yoke of European colonists, 
and to repossess themselves of their native soil ! And 
to this purpose he had devoted, not only his life, but the 
whole vigor of his energetic intellect, the vast scope of 
his knowledge and the marvellous power he possessed in 
swaying the minds of men. In his MSS. was found a 
complete and admirable scheme of government for the 
future Indian confederacy, in which nothing was forgotten 
and every department was elaborated down to the minu- 
test detail, and so firm was his belief in the ultimate 
success of his plans that he coolly said to the court- 
martial before which he was summoned : " Believe me, 
before the century is passed, the Europeans will have a 
very small footing on this continent ! " 

This self-reliance was not to be shaken by such a 
slight mishap as his captivity. He bore his confinement 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 25 

and all the attendant privations with imperturbable 
equanimity. His quarters were near the arsenal ; a fire 
broke out there, and amid a fearful explosion of shells 
and many tons of powder, the whole group of buildings 
was wrapped in sheets of flame. Everybody expected to 
find the prisoner dead, but to the boundless surprise of 
those who first ventured near the scene of the terrible 
disaster, he was discovered in his log cabin, which had 
escaped as by a miracle, calmly reading a favorite Greek 
author. When they asked him why he had made no 
effort to escape, he coolly told them, that exploding shells 
were dangerous neighbors, and the safest place, in his 
opinion, was close by them, as few, if any, would fall back 
precisely to the place from whence they came, and thus 
he had quietly remained where he was, and escaped un- 
harmed. It is difficult to imagine how formidable a man 
of such marvellous endowments might have become to 
the infant colonies of the South ; but, fortunately for their 
peace, he died suddenly while yet a captive, and before 
his Indian brethren could come to his rescue. 

Very different, and yet by no means less strange, was 
the wayward fancy which changed a pious minister's ten- 
der child into an Indian squaw, and made her prefer the 
wild life of the woods to her place by the hearth of her 
home. During a fierce stormy winter night of the year 
1704, three hundred French and Indian soldiers, under 
Hertel de Ronville, fell upon the peaceful village of 
Deerfield in Massachusetts, plundering, burning, and 
slaying. They seized the pastor of the little flock, the 



26 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Rev. John Williams, and carried him, his wife, and six 
of his children as captives to Canada. On the second 
day his beloved wife succumbed ; she sank exhausted by 
the side of the narrow path and was instantly tomahawked ; 
twenty prisoners shared her terrible fate, before they 
reached their destination in Canada, — for the sufferings 
were terrible, the pace furious, and the weather severe, 
even for a Canadian winter. There were no provisions 
dealt out, save a handful of ground nuts at times, or a few 
acorns ; now and then a bunch of purslain or bogweed 
was thrown into the kettle, and twice or thrice, on the 
journey, a small supply of dog's-flesh was doled out to 
the poor captives. They had no clothes, for they had been 
completely stripped when taken from their houses, no 
shoes, no stockings — nothing but a thin blanket for each 
prisoner to cover his nakedness, and a few leather stock- 
ings distributed among them to keep their feet from per- 
ishing with cold. In this plight they were forced to 
travel twenty and thirty miles a day, carrying heavy bur- 
dens for their masters, and threatened with instant death 
if they lagged but for a moment. Oh, who can fathom 
the grief of a father's heart as he saw the wife of his 
bosom slain in cold blood, and the children of his old 
age sink, one by one, in mortal agony, by the wayside ! 

Fortunately the captives, when they reached Canada, 
fell into the hands of the French, and were, by them, 
treated with humanity, and even with kindness. Two 
years later, the Rev. Mr. Williams and two of his chil- 
dren were redeemed in Boston ; the unhappy father re- 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 2J 

turned like a faithful shepherd to his little flock at Deer- 
field, and became known all over the colonies as The 
Redeemed Captive, partly from his terrible story, and 
partly from an account of his sufferings and trials, which 
he published under that title. But the strangest part of 
the adventure remains to be told. His youngest daugh- 
ter, Eunice, who was but seven years old when the fatal 
event occurred, had been adopted into a family of Pray- 
ing Indians near Montreal, and refused to accompany her 
father and her brothers when they returned to the colo- 
nies. With a heavy heart they left her in the hands of 
their enemies, and trusted that with advancing years an 
awakening sense of her natural relations to her race and 
her family would change her views. But it was far other- 
wise. She married one of the chiefs of the tribe among 
whom she lived, called Cahnewaga, and all solicitations 
from family, friends, and visitors to return to her house 
and to abandon her Catholic faith proved unavailing. 
Even when she was at last persuaded to visit her relatives 
in New England, when the whole village turned out to 
receive their beloved pastor's long-lost daughter, and 
proved the sincerity of their deep sympathy by keeping a 
day of fast, and by assembling to pray in concert for her 
delivery, she remained firm in her attachment to Indian 
life. She persisted in wearing the blanket and counting 
her beads, and although urged and besought by her two 
brothers, both worthy ministers of the gospel, to remain 
with them, she returned, after each visit, unchanged to 
the fires of her wigwam and the love of her own Mohawk 
children. (Bancroft III. p. 214.) 



28 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

With such striking examples before our eyes we need 
not wonder if the stern old Puritans, in their instinctive 
dread of all witchery and weird spells, attributed a satanic 
descent to the poor Indians. Here were men and women 
alike, bred amid all the benign influences of civilization, 
and early taught the great doctrines of our faith, unable 
to resist the magic charm of Indian life, whether they en- 
tered upon it as tender children, tasted its sweets as 
young men in the full vigor of early manhood, or resorted 
to it in declining years, and weary of the vanity and vexa- 
tion of spirit inherent in the artificial society of older 
countries. It avails little to be told by a Mather, or even 
an Edwards, that the woods were full of the Devil's lures, 
and the very beasts of the fields possessed by evil spirits, 
which tempted men to join them in savage life and to 
worship abominable idols. Nor can we imagine a pious 
minister's child to have been attracted by the cunning 
arts and wicked tricks which Indian women employed to 
enhance their beauty and to increase their attractions. 
For the Rev. Mr. Johnson, of Woburn, Mass., records in 
his " Wonder-Working Providence" with horror and detes- 
tation the shocking discovery he had made, that " their 
squaws use the sinful art of painting their faces." The 
charm is not to be sought for on the surface, and the 
mystery must needs remain unsolved, till some Tannhau- 
ser shall return from the Venus Mountain of Indian hunt- 
ing grounds and frankly tell us the spell that bewitched 
his eye and beguiled his heart. 

It is not altogether improbable that with an instinc- 



LO ! THE POOR INDIAN. 29 

live view to counteract such diabolical spells of Indian 
magic, an effort was made, at an early day in our history, 
to canonize one of their most famous chieftains. It seems 
that there is not far from Doylestown in Pennsylvania a 
beautiful, endless spring, which gushes full and crystal 
clear from the mountain-side, and then flows merrily off, 
a good-sized brook, to fall at some little distance into the 
Neshaminy River. By the side of this spring, under the 
shade of a few noble sycamores, a green mound is pointed 
out as the last resting-place upon earth of Saint Tam- 
many. A native of this locality, Tamane, as William 
Perm wrote his name, or Tamanend, as he was called by 
others, he remained there till he came of age, but then 
crossed with his tribe, the Alleghanies, and went down to 
the rich hunting-fields of what is now the State of Ohio. 
By his bravery and his wisdom he rose, towards the mid- 
dle of the seventeenth century, to become one of the 
leading sachems among the Lenni-Lenape, and to make 
his name familiar to the ear of all settlers in the colonies. 
For he was from the beginning a warm and staunch friend 
of the whites, and to him they owed the peace that for a 
time reigned along the border and enabled them to secure 
new homes for thousands of their suffering brethren. 
When old age crept over him, and he was no longer able 
to lead in war, he resigned his high dignity, appointed 
an able successor, and retired to his early home in Berks 
County. Here he was constantly visited by Indians of 
all tribes and nations, and by whites from the adjoining 
colonies. W T henever he was called upon to settle disputes 



30 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

or to decide grave questions, he had but one wise counsel 
to give : Unity — in peace for happiness, in war for de- 
fence ! Thus the old chieftain grew in renown, and his 
fame spread far and near ; when, at last, he was gathered 
to his fathers, his name survived him for generations, and 
red men and whites alike revered the wise, peace-loving 
sachem. The name was preserved among the Indians 
as a noble title of honor, and conferred, from time to time, 
upon those who seemed to deserve such high distinction. 
A certain Colonel George Morgan, for instance, who had 
been sent from Princeton to some of the Western tribes, 
by order of Congress, endeared himself so much to them 
by his great gentleness and goodness, that the Delawares 
bestowed upon him, in 1776, in solemn council, the name 
of their venerated chief. Morgan brought back with him 
such a wonderful account of Tamane, that the Continen- 
tal troops during the war, casting about for a rallying cry 
to oppose the hated St. George of the British, dubbed the 
great Indian a saint, and hailed him as St. Tamanend. 
As such he soon appeared in some almanacs, as we are 
assured by Hechewelder, and not long after the name 
was inscribed on the flags of the Pennsylvania troops 
under Washington's command. 

He had, however, in other states, even before that 
date, received the honor of canonization, and some day 
in early May, varying from the first to the twelfth, was 
generally chosen as the Indian Saints' Day. Tammany 
societies were organized everywhere, processions held, 
and mysteries solemnized. Thus we read already in 



LO! THE POOR INDIAN. 3 1 

1774 : " Yesterday was celebrated in this place (Norfolk, 
Va.,) the anniversary of St. Tammany, the tutelar Saint 
of the American colonies. After the ladies had retired, 
towards 4 o'clock a.m., the Sons of Tammany, according 
to the immemorial custom of these countries, encircled 
their king and practised the ancient, mysterious war-dance, 
so highly descriptive of the warmest attachment and free- 
dom of spirit." (Va. Gazette, May 3, 1774.) Nor was 
the saint's popularity less great farther South. A small 
village on Roanoke River, in Mecklenburg County, Va., 
bears still the name of St. Tammany, and so does a parish 
in Louisiana, lying between the Mississippi and Lake 
Pontchartrain. 

How the poor saint subsequently was drummed out 
of the army, by special order of the Secretary of War, 
because his festival " tended to debauchery among the 
troops," how he was welcomed by the Democrats of New 
York, and installed with great pomp and circumstance as 
the patron saint of a powerful branch of that party, and 
how he finally ruled supreme in the Empire State, and 
well-nigh threatened to exact abject worship from a whole 
nation — all this is history. But the satanic element in 
the poor Indian's character seems to have been irrepres- 
sible : in the midst of his triumphs, at the very moment 
of his greatest success, the saint was discovered to be a 
bitter mockery, a vain idol, and how he fell, and in his 
fall crushed his high priests and most ardent devotees — 
is it not written in all the journals of the year 187 1 ? 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 



ii. 




ORE than three hundred years ago, 
on a fair October day, when golden 
sunshine fell rich and glowing 
upon the sparkling waters and the 
gorgeous forests, a strange group 
of men stood in the far north of 
our country on the summit of a high hill, looking with 
wonder and with amazement at the grand sight before 
them. The central figure was a seafaring man — so said 
the weather-beaten countenance and the well-poised rest 
of the huge frame ; but the dress was rich, the manner 
haughty, and from his eye flashed an intelligence that 
spoke at once of long, deep thought in days gone by, and 
of bright and glorious visions of the future. But who are 
those strange beings by his side, who look with stealthy 
glance at the strange form and mysterious ways of the 
great man? Their dusky skin, their savage weapons 
and rude covering betray the poor children of the soil, 
standing half proudly, half affrighted in the presence of a 
stranger, in whom their instincts see the enemy, and their 
heart's faint apprehensions the future master. 

The stranger was Jacques Cartier, the Master-Mariner 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 33 

of St. Malo, whom King Francis I., king of France, had 
sent out a second time to explore the unknown Western 
World, and to find out its rich mines of gold and silver. 
He had once more entered that vast estuary, the mouth 
of the St. Lawrence, and, leaving his larger vessels behind, 
sailed boldly up the great river, till he reached a beauti- 
ful island lying in front of a lofty mountain. Here he 
found an Indian village, Hochelaga, and soon saw him- 
self surrounded by the owners of the land, who came to 
gaze with marvel and with awe at the white man, in whose 
hands were thunder and lightning. He ascended the 
mountain, and, struck by its beautiful shape and command- 
ing position, he called it the Royal Mountain, the Mon- 
treal of our day. And then he drank in with eager 
delight and prophetic vision the exquisite beauty and 
vast grandeur of the scene below him; There was the 
magnificent river, sending its rich tribute to the distant 
ocean, and lined on both banks with smiling prairies and 
shady forests. As far as the eye could reach, the rich 
soil, tht luxuriant verdure, tne abundance of game, and' 
the very beauty of the landscape seemed to invite man to 
cor. aid enjoy the boundless treasures of a virgin land. 
But, as he looked westward, his penetrating glance fell 
upon the rippling waves as they dance;' merrily in the 
lingering light, and beyond the foaming rapids upon a 
vast sheet of water glowing in deep bloody red, and stretch- 
ing apparently without limit towards the setting sun. 
Surprised and wondering he turned to the painted chief 
by his side, and uttered a few short words. Had he 



34 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

really already discovered the great open sea that should 
afford Europe a pathway to distant Cathay, and by a 
short route bring the treasures of the Indies to the har- 
bors of France ? Then came the answer, slowly, solemnly : 
" That river at your feet has passed through three great 
seas, and beyond these lies another sea of fresh water, 
which has no bounds ; and still farther towards the setting 
sun is another great river, which flows to the land from 
which the sweet winds of the southwest bring us health 
and happiness, and where there is neither snow nor 
ice." 

Such were the first faint rumors of the distant Missis- 
sippi, that ever fell upon the ears of a Christian. A vague 
longing to see this marvellous world of ocean-lakes and 
gigantic rivers filled the heart of the bold sailor, and, thanks 
to his eloquent words and glowing accounts, spread 
throughout fair France, till knight and monk, lord and 
varlet, vied with each other in fearless effort and ready 
sacrifice to penetrate the great mystery. Pious Jesuits 
gave their lives to raise the Cross of Christ in the wilder- 
ness, and haughty nobles stooped to become hewers of 
wood and drawers of water in order to secure a New 
France to their great sovereign. Providence granted 
them the coveted boon, and France can inscribe upon the 
scanty roll of her discoveries the proud claim of having 
first explored the interior of the New World, and to have 
revealed to the world the great mystery of the Hidden 
River. 

It was fortunate for the French discoverers that it is 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 35 

a national trait of their people to act impetuously, upon 
the impulse of the moment. For already, rivals had 
appeared in the Spanish navigators of that day, who 
threatened to be before them in the eager race. In the 
great ports of the world, and at the courts of many a 
sovereign, faint reports would be heard of a bold sailor, 
who, as long ago as 1528, had undertaken the conquest 
of all the lands on the northern shore of the Mexican 
Gulf. Fortune, however, had been against him ; he had 
died, and storms by sea and famine by land, disease and 
death, had made sad havoc among his followers, till only 
five survived. These were made captives by the very 
men whom they had come to capture, but after four years' 
slavery they escaped and boldly struck inland. Here 
they met Indians who had never yet beheld white men ; 
and being looked upon and revered by them as super- 
natural beings, they availed themselves of the prestige to 
cross the continent from ocean to ocean. Their leader 
was Cabeza de Vaca (lowhead), and his name, repeated 
by many a stammering tongue in France and in England, 
was, for generations, a by-word of fearful perils endured 
and of strange discoveries made in distant America. 
There is no doubt that he must have seen the Great 
River, as yet unnamed; that he must even have sailed 
for some distance on its turbid waters ; but his narrative 
makes no mention of the fact ; and the cautious policy of 
the Spanish Government withheld whatsoever information 
it may have obtained : the river was still unexplored, and 
even in official dispatches alluded to only as the Hidden 



^6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 



River. But, as if in defiance of all such jealous precau- 
tions, the " Inland Sea," as it was often called, soon rang 
its fame once more in the ears of all Europe, and though 
the words fell hard and heavy upon all who heard them, 
accompanied by the death-knell of a great and glorious 
hero, they only gained new attractions and greater lustre 
by the sad tragedy, and filled the imagination with new 
visions of increased splendor. 

A former companion of Pizarro, Ferdinand De Soto, 
had longed for years to renew the life of reckless peril and 
surpassing glory which awaited the bold adventurer on 
the shores of the New World. Allured by mysterious 
rumors of vast treasures hid in the forests of the contin- 
ent, and misled by lying reports of treacherous Indians, 
he had abandoned the governorship of the rich Island of 
Cuba, had landed in Florida, and marched his faithful 
followers — the largest army of Christians ever yet seen in 
the New World — from the shores of the Atlantic far into 
the wilderness. Led by a captain of dauntless energy, 
his troops became invincible ; in vain did the elements 
shroud the chaste beauty of the virgin land in veils of 
mist and rain ; in vain did pathless mountains rise in 
their way, and swollen rivers angrily stop them in their 
progress ; — they were men, and felt and proved themselves 
masters of all nature. In vain did the natives try to im- 
pede their march by cunning and by force : they easily 
triumphed over rude and ill-directed masses of half-armed 
savages, and soon learnt to be wary and watchful. Their 
horses fell in forest and field; their heavy cannons stuck 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 



37 



fast in mud and mire ; their very weapons were lost or 
destroyed in many a skirmish and conflagration, and their 
numbers were sadly diminished, but they only closed 
their ranks in silence, and with sturdy minds and stout 
hearts pressed close after their indefatigable leader. 
But what all the powers of nature and all the passions of 
man had failed to accomplish, was at last brought about 
by the death of their noble chief. 

They had marched for months, ever straining their 
wearied eyes for a gladsome sight of the Hidden River, 
when, on a bright summer morning in June, 1541, the 
coveted goal was at last reached. As their foremost 
horsemen broke from the forest and eagerly galloped up 
a gentle slope, they found themselves suddenly upon a 
steep bluff, and at their feet rolled the waters of a mighty 
river, such as their eyes had never yet beheld in this 
world. Their hearts were too full of gratitude, we are 
told, to utter words of thanks, or even of wonder ; they 
halted and gazed at the great mystery till their eyes over- 
flowed and their pent-up feelings escaped in one great 
cry of delight. Even then they knew not how to call the 
gigantic stream ■ the Great River it was to them for a 
time, and as such it appears in the first account of the 
expedition which we owe to a Portuguese adventurer, 
who seems to be himself involved in the mystery which 
still shrouded the river, and is quoted by Hakluqt (1609) 
only as a " Gentleman from Elvas." Nor is it quite cer- 
tain whether De Soto himself, or earlier historians, gave 
to the river the next name it bears, Rio dd Espiritu 



38 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Santo, under which it is already entered in a map drawn 
up in 152 1, to establish Garay's claim to its discovery. 
" The river," says the Gentleman from Elvas, " was 
almost half a league wide ; if a man stood still on the 
other side, it could not be discerned whether he was a 
man or no. The river was of great depth and of a strong 
current ; the water was always muddy ; there came down 
the river continually many trees and timber, which the 
force of the water and stream brought down (Hist. Coh's. 
of La., II. p. 168). Two hundred canoes, laden with 
armed and painted Indians, came dashing down the cur- 
rent to greet the new-comers ; the chieftain's boat, gor- 
geously apparelled, led the gay procession, and every 
canoe was bright with waving plumes and clanging shields. 
The delighted Spaniards eagerly drank in the rare sight ; 
they looked with fierce covetousness at the populous 
towns that dotted the country, and at the mighty river 
that was to be their key to the land of gold. For many 
months they sailed on its waters and marched along its 
banks, wintering within sight of the river. But another 
great tragedy was approaching, to add new gloom and new 
mystery to the annals of the Hidden River. In the fol- 
lowing spring De Soto fell sick, refused to yield to the 
advice of friends and the promptings of nature, and suc- 
cumbed. Who can tell the poignant grief, the over- 
whelming sense of desolation that his death must have 
caused in the hearts of his followers, his faithful friends ? 
Decimated by disease and incessant warfare ; stripped of 
all comforts, of their wonted food, and even of scanty 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 39 

clothing ; weighed down by grief for the lost ones, and by 
sore fears for the future, they were suddenly robbed of 
their leader, who had watched over them with fatherly 
care, encouraged them by his example, and cheered them 
by his indomitable spirit. The happiest issue, the 
brightest hope they dared to anticipate was to float down 
the mysterious river through hosts of hostile nations, to 
be carried, they knew not whither, — to the Vermillion Sea 
in the Pacific Ocean, or to nearer gulfs and friendly har- 
bors. But first they had to perform their last solemn 
duty to their beloved chieftain ; to secure his remains 
against the fierce hatred and bitter revenge of the Indians. 
At a place not far, probably, from the Lower Chickasaw 
Bluffs, they cut down a gigantic oak tree, carefully hol- 
lowed out the immense trunk, and in this strange coffin 
deposited the body of their great leader. Then, on a 
dark and gloomy night, with the cross leading them on- 
ward, and unspeakable grief in their hearts, they marched 
in solemn procession to the river-bank ; not a word was 
heard save the low chanting of the priest ; the very voices 
of nature seemed to be hushed, and only the steady, un- 
ceasing surge of the sullen waters filled the air with its 
low murmuring sounds. Thus they reached a tongue of 
land jutting out into the river, and forcing it to narrow 
its channel and to deepen its bed, and here, in a place 
where the waters were nineteen fathoms deep, they de- 
posited all that remained of their great chieftain, to rest 
there, safe from the scent of brutes and the passions of 
men, till his soul was to reawaken on the banks of " a 



40 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

pure river of water of life." Thus the discoverer of the 
Mississippi sleeps beneath its waters, adding another 
mystery to the many that give the Hidden River such 
strange charms in the eyes of philosophers and historians. 
For Spanish jealousy continued to preserve a rigid silence 
about all that had been discovered ; the very place of 
the first sight is not accurately known, and the anxiety of 
Spain to preserve the integrity of its claims upon the 
whole of America, based upon the Bull of Pope Alexander 
VI., of 1495, contributed to increase, by fair means and 
foul, the mystery which for many a generation yet shrouded 
the Hidden River from the sight of man. Even Iberville, 
the daring Canadian sailor, who, after discovering the 
mouth of the river in 1699, had sailed up some little dis- 
tance, was dismayed by its vast size and ominous fame, 
and, with faint heart, gave up the effort and returned to 
France without having solved the great question of the 
river that still remained to him, and to the world at large, 
the Hidden River. 

It was left to a very humble countryman of his, a men- 
dicant monk of the order of St. Francis, to hand down 
his name to posterity as the first European who is cer- 
tainly known to have discovered and explored the larger 
portion of the great river. This was Father Marquette, 
a native of Picardie, and one of the most illustrious mis- 
sionaries of France. A Recollect, as his special order 
was called, he had devoted himself to the conversion of 
the Indians, exchanging the comforts of European life 
and bright prospects of a brilliant career in the Order of 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 41 

Jesuits for the hardships of Indian wigwams and a mar- 
tyr's crown of thorns. In his western home at Mackinaw 
he heard much of the great river and the countless nations 
of Indians that dwelt upon its banks. His heart burnt 
with a holy zeal to rescue them from eternal ruin, and 
though eminently useful among the Hurons, who loved 
and obeyed him like a father, he expressed his readiness 
to leave his newly- won home " to seek new nations 
toward the South Sea, who are still unknown to us, and 
to teach them of our great God, and to visit the great 
river in order to open the passage to so many of our 
fathers who have so long awaited this happiness." What 
touching humility, what burning zeal, in these simple 
words ! Patiently he waited for long years, till worldly 
interest came to the aid of heavenly zeal. An enterpris- 
ing fur-trader, Louis Jolliet, obtained permission from 
the governor and intendant of New France (Canada), to 
explore the great western river, and Marquette was or- 
dered to accompany the party as missionary. After a 
long and tedious canoe voyage on smaller rivers, they 
sailed down the Mesconsin (Wisconsin) river, and found 
themselves at its mouth, gliding upon a gentle current 
into a vast inland sea. On the right rose a chain of lofty 
mountains, on the left lay fertile fields, and islands dotted 
the surface of the waters. The memorable day was the 
17th of June, 1673, aR d was at once solemnly celebrated 
by the delighted voyageurs ; a mass was held, a cross 
was planted, and the river called Conception, from the 
fact that the pious father had, from an early date, given 



42 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

up his whole life to the special veneration of the Immac- 
ulate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and fervently invoked 
the latter, as he touchingly tells us, " in order to obtain 
of God the favor of being able to visit the nations on the 
Mississippi River." The precise spot where the desired 
favor was first granted to him was, in all probability, near 
the present city of Prairie du Chien, and opposite to the 
town of McGregor, in Iowa. From here, he and his com- 
panions descended fearlessly the broad, unknown river, 
now past numerous islands with beautiful groves of cot- 
ton-wood, and then skirting immense plains on which 
moose and deer were browsing in peace, while strange 
animals swam across the river, and monstrous fish ap- 
peared in its waters. And all this time they were utterly 
alone, beholding no human face, and hearing no human 
voice in this appalling wilderness ! 

For a month the seven brave Frenchmen sailed down 
the great river in their frail canoe, seeing strange and 
weird wonders, meeting new tribes ate very turn, and ever 
holding their lives in their hands. But the cross they 
bore gave them strength of faith in the hour of peril, and 
the calumet, the magic power of which they had early 
discovered, secured them almost invariably a welcome 
among the Indians. It was only when they reached a 
village not far from the mouth of the Arkansas, which 
they called Akamsea, that more serious difficulties arose 
in the way, from the fact that they now encountered tribes 
speaking new and utterly unintelligible languages, and 
thus, having learnt that a few days' sail from where they 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 43 

were, the river surely fell into the Atlantic, they turned 
their bark up stream once more, on the 17th of July, and 
safely reached their northern home. It was fortunate for 
science that the humble discoverer was a man of high 
culture as well as of pious zeal, and the account of his 
journey, sent promptly to his superiors in France, but 
published only much later (1681, in Thevenot's Recueil 
de Voyages), is extremely graphic and surprisingly ac- 
curate. It is on a map attached to his " Narrative " that 
the river itself appears for the first time in print, and by 
its side the five great tributaries, the Wisconsin, Illinois, 
Missouri, Ohio, and Arkansas. Here also we read for 
the first time the much-abused name — Mississippi. It is 
true that Father Claude Dahlon, on a map of Lake Supe- 
rior, which was published in 1670-1, entered already the 
words : " To the South flows the great river, which they 
call Missisipi, which can have its mouth only in the Florida 
sea, more than 400 leagues from here," but as the river 
itself is missing, the mere name cannot be valued highly. 
Father Alloues, also, had evidently heard the strange 
word, and his is, as far as known, the first recorded men- 
tion of the name. Speaking of certain Indian tribes he 
says : " They live on the great River, called Mesipi ; " 
and in another place of the same official report he adds, 
that a beautiful stream " leads to the great river named 
Messi-sepy, which is only six days' sail from here." 
(O'Callaghan Jesuit Relations, 1666-7, p. 106, and 
1669-70, p. 92.) In a work of somewhat doubtful char- 
acter (Carolana, by G. W. Gent, London, 1650, p. 113,) 



44 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

it is stated that a " Colonel Wood, in Virginia, inhabiting 
at the falls of James River, about ioo miles west of 
Chesapeake Bay, discovered, at several times, several 
branches of the great rivers, Ohio and Mechasebe in 1654." 
But here also the name is an empty sound, as no knowl- 
edge had yet been obtained of the river itself. It was 
only when Father Marquette had actually sailed for more 
than 2,000 miles on its broad bosom, and when its vast 
size and noble tributaries were fully appreciated, that the 
name of Mississippi became a reality. Men could now 
understand its meaning as derived from the two Algon- 
quis words — Missi, great, and Sepe, a river. The almost 
countless varieties of forms under which the name appears 
are quite as much due to the violence done the original 
words by the dull ears and awkward tongues of Europeans 
as to the different dialects of various Indian tribes. Thus 
northern lips would call it Meschasipi, as quoted by Louis 
Hennepin, in speaking of the Illinois (Description de la 
Louisiane, p. 47), and southern tribes said Mcaet-chassipi, 
if we believe Du Pratz (Historie de la Louisiane L, p. 
141), who blames his countrymen for corrupting the word 
into a French Mississippi. A later French writer, Du- 
mont, falls back upon the barbarous form of Mechassipy, 
but under all these disguises we easily recognize the origi- 
nal Missi. Thus Michigan was at first known as Missi- 
chigancn (L'Hennepin II., p. 305) ; Lake Illinois was 
called by the Miamis Mischigonong, the great lake; and 
the famous central " home " of the Six Nations was in Iro- 
quois called Massaroomekes, the great dwelling-place. 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 45 

Michili Mackinack was formerly Missili Mackinac, and 
the Missouri bears the same imprint. It was only to the 
far South, among the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, that 
an entirely new designation was given to the Hidden 
River, and yet the meaning was the same. They called 
it Oh-hinnak, the great pathway of waters, a term which 
they substituted for the word River, which is wanting in 
their vocabulary. 

And what became of the pious priest, the father of 
New France, as he has often been called ? He returned 
to his modest duties, carrying the glad tidings now to 
this and now to that savage nation, as his superiors 
ordered, or God's providence seemed to direct. Thus it 
was that in the sweet month of May, in the year 1675, ne 
was making his way from Green Bay to his old friends at 
Mackinaw, not unconscious of his approaching end, and 
desirous to bid a tender farewell to his beloved children. 
But it was not to be. He had reached the mouth of a 
little stream falling into Lake Michigan on its eastern 
shores when he was overcome by fatigue and felt his end 
approaching. Erecting a small altar with his own hands 
under a melancholy pine-tree standing alone on the de- 
serted strand, he said mass, heard the confessions of his 
companions, and then retired to his humble bark-cabin in 
the woods. Here he fell asleep never to awake in this 
world. Two canoemen, his only companions, dug his 
grave in the sand, and thus he went to his rest from his 
weary wanderings and incessant labors. But he was too 
dear to his red children to be left on that distant shore. 



46 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Two years afterwards his own flock came in large num- 
bers, disinterred his remains, and prepared them for burial 
after Indian manner. They then placed them in a canoe, 
and a mournful flotilla sailing in its wake escorted them 
homewards ; here and there other tribes joined them ; 
from every bay and bight more canoes shot out to meet 
the solemn procession, and when at last they approached 
Mackinac, the lake and the heights and the welkin sang 
with the mournful chant arising from the waters. The 
little bark-box that held the sacred remains was deposited 
in a small vault of the church, and there, we are told, " he 
reposes as the guardian angel of the Ottawa mission." 

But his grave was not, on that account, forgotten. The 
place is, to this day, pointed out to the traveller on the 
banks of the little river which now bears his name, and 
many a blessing is invoked upon the memory of the great 
missionary. " When the storms of the lake swept over 
the Indian's frail canoe, he called upon the name of Mar- 
quette, and the wind ceased and the waves were still," we 
read in the Nouvelle France (VI. p. 21); and the author 
tells us in his letters (Charlevoix, Letters, etc., II. p. 96) 
an apparent miracle which he witnessed. It was fifty 
years later when he visited the sacred spot, and to his 
great amazement he found that the waters had forced a 
passage for themselves at the most difficult point, cutting 
through a bluff rather than cross the low-lands, where he 
still saw the grave of Marquette ! 

It is almost painful to turn from this noble type of 
modest greatness and judicious zeal to the next visitor 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 47 

of the Great River, Father Hennepin. The second Euro- 
pean who sailed on the waters of the Mississippi, he 
marred the interest and jeopardized the value of his im- 
portant discoveries by boundless vanity and reckless ex- 
aggeration, making himself remembered, as Bancroft says, 
" not merely as a light-hearted, ambitious, daring dis- 
coverer, but also as a boastful liar." He might well 
have rested contented with the glory of having been the 
first Christian who ever ascended the great river from the 
mouth of the Illinois to the Falls of St. Anthony, and of 
having discovered a large part of the Meschisipi, as he 
frequently calls it ; but his desire to astonish the world 
and to eclipse the fame of La Salle, led him to publish, 
in 1697, a description of Louisiana, in which he claimed 
to have also descended the river to its mouth. Strangely 
enough, the vivacity of his style, the accuracy of his de- 
scriptions, and the minuteness of detail imposed upon 
critics for centuries, and it was only in our day, and 
thanks to the unerring judgment of an American historian, 
that the imposition was discovered. 

In the year 1682 the river, still a Hidden River to the 
world at large, assumed once more a new name. A 
French adventurer, once a Jesuit, then a fur-trader in 
Canada, and now a nobleman, bearing the title of an 
American domain, had his imagination excited by the re- 
ports of Marquette's discoveries, and determined to ex- 
plore the Hidden River to its mouth. The authorities in 
France encouraged him in his enterprise, and he returned 
to this country with ample authority and valuable assist- 



45 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

ance to carry out his great plan. But once more the 
magic charm, which for a long time seemed to protect 
the mystery of the great river, threw countless obstacles 
in his way ; friends forsook him, creditors abused him, 
and his ship with its rich freight disappeared on the 
northern lakes. Nothing daunted, he started in a frail 
canoe, reached, on the 2d of February, 1682, the banks 
of the Mississippi, and boldly ventured upon the appalling 
" wilderness of waters." Grateful to the minister, who 
had encouraged him when others smiled at his enthusi- 
asm, he call the river the Riviere Colbei-t, bestowing the 
name of the minister's son, Seignelay, on the Illinois 
River. Then he sailed down the whole length of the 
mighty river, the first European beholding the beautiful 
regions south of the Arkansas, till at last he reached the 
far-off mouth of the river, and thus completed the work 
his predecessors had left unfinished. There, on the 9th 
of April of the same year, he solemnly took posses- 
sion of the whole vast valley watered by the great river 
and its gigantic tributaries in the name of his master, the 
King of France. Erecting a cross, with the arms of 
France, near the place where the waters of the gulf min- 
gle with those of the river, he declared on a leaden plate, 
deposited in the earth, that " Louis the Great, King of 
France and Navarre reigns," and for him took possession 
of Louisiana. The name of the country was not now 
used for the first time, for it occurs already in Father 
Hennepin's account, whicli was printed in the same year, 
and must therefore have been in use before. (Charlevoix, 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 



49 



Nouvelle France, I., p. 464.) But the Hidden River was 
hidden no longer ; its entire course had been explored 
and was speedily made known to the world. Hennepin 
still spoke of it as Colbert, saying " There are no English- 
men at the mouth of the River Colbert" (Nouvelle D - 
couverte, II., p. 310), and " Father Marquette found that 
he would have to look for some other river, besides River 
Colbert, that discharges itself into the Mar Vermejo, or 
the Caliphomian Gulph." (II. 348.) But now the 
majesty of the river, displayed in its full length, seemed 
to call for new honors, and thus it appeared now as River 
St. Louis, a name which it long retained. Although the 
" First Establishment of Faith in New France," in 169 1, 
still speaks of the River Colbert, following probably, the 
example set by Joutel in his Journal, and even, once at 
least, by Father Hennepin, it was the St. Louis in Du- 
mont and far into the eighteenth century. The former, 
taking the cue from the Memoires du Ch. de Tonty, states 
that " the River St. Louis has its source West of Canada, 
in the country of the Issatis, explored by Mr. Daven with 
Father Louis, a Recollect, four other Frenchmen, and 
two Illinois Indians, sent by de la Salle." 

The Hidden River exacted the usual penalty from the 
daring discoverer : — De Soto had died in sight of the goal ; 
Marquette lay buried in the wilderness, and La Salle fell 
by the hand of the assassin in a remote corner of Texas. 
Thus were the hands punished that dared to draw the 
veil from before our own Image of Sais. 

Nor are the various disguises under which the Hidden 
4 



50 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

River appears in the annals of our continent, at an end 
yet. Charlevoix speaks of savages who call it Malbouchia, 
and there is a statement on record that the natives spoke 
to Iberville of the Mississippi by that name ; but the 
word is too evidently French in form and in meaning to 
be charged to Indian idioms. Another name, La Palis- 
sade,' bestowed upon it by the Spaniards, was readily 
understood by the same Iberville, when he examined the 
mouth of the river in February, 1699, and found it thickly 
set with trees, which the fierce current was incessantly 
tearing away and replacing, thus forming a real and most 
dangerous palisade (Charlevoix, Nouv. Fr. II., p. 255). 
As the designation applied, however, to the mouth of the 
river exclusively, it never became popular, and with the 
name of Barbancha, mentioned by Dumont (Memoires 
Historiques de la Louisiane I., p. 3), soon disappeared 
from public records. 

A similar fate seems to have controlled the names of 
its great tributaries. The earliest mention of the Wiscon- 
sin, well-known to the French, who were quite at home 
on its waters, occurs on Thevenot's map accompanying 
Father Marquette's narrative, where it is called Missious- 
ing. In the narrative itself, however, it appears regularly 
as Mesconsm, and the probability is great that this was 
originally intended for Mesconsin, especially as Father 
Marquette also speaks of a River Miskousing. The 
Illinois was originally so-called from the name of the 
great Indian nation that lived mainly on its banks, be- 
cause through it lay the direct route to the Illinois villages 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 5 I 

which Father Marquette was the first to visit. Joutel, in 
his Journal, speaks of them as the fs/mois, but this is 
evidently the result of careless writing. They called 
themselves proudly the Lenore-Lenape, men of full age, in 
the vigor of their strength, and are quoted as such by 
La Salle, Joutel, and Hennepin. The latter calls them, 
at times, more correctly the Mini, " which, in the lan- 
guage of the nation signifies a perfect and accomplished 
man." (Nouv. Decouv., p. 119.) The tribe was known 
as Miamis to the French, and as Delawares to the Eng- 
lish; but among themselves they permitted no other desig- 
nation but Lenore-Lenape. Heckewelder states in explana- 
tion of the term, that they claimed to be a nation from 
the far West, who had conquered all the eastern part of 
the American continenx, and hence called themselves the 
original or true men. It has been ascertained that all 
their traditions point to a former home beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, from whence their early ancestors came, con- 
quering more ancient nations whose monuments are still 
scattered broadcast over the continent. Hence, also, 
more than forty powerful tribes called them reverently 
Grandfathers, in respectful acknowledgment of their 
ancient honors, while, in their turn, they rendered homage 
to the seniority of the Wyandots by calling them Uncles, 
and the Mohicans were honored with the title of Elder 
Brothers. Father Hennepin tried his best to deprive the 
useful river of its well-earned name. " I have named it, 
in the map of my Louisiana, the River Seignelay" he says, 
" in honor to the Minister of State of that name, who laid 



52 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

to the heart and took care of all the concerns of our dis- 
covery." (Nouv. Decouv. II., p. 45.) But the effort 
was in vain ; the name, never in actual use, soon disap- 
peared from maps and State papers, and the Illinois 
retained its historic title. 

Marquette speaks in his unpretending narrative of a 
village on the banks of the Mississippi, which he heard 
called Oumisouri. Here is, no doubt, the origin of the 
Missouri River, as it was called at a later period. For 
the Reverend Father himself speaks of it only by its 
Indian name, Pekitanoni, or the Muddy River, and enters 
it as such in his valuable map. La Salle seems to have 
heard of an Indian tribe, called the Massourites, but being 
more forcibly impressed by the number and power of the 
Osage Indians, and, like all Frenchmen, a very bad geogra- 
pher, he boldly christened the river the Osage or Ozage, 
and as such it appears in Dumont, where it is mentioned 
as " the boundary line of Louisiana on that side." 
(Mem. Hist, de la La. II., p. 281.) It is not apparent 
why it should have been spoken of as the River St. 
Philippe in the proclamation of Louis XIV., which granted 
the colony of Louisiana to Crozat, in 1712, nor does the 
name appear elsewhere. The Yellow River of Dr. Daniel 
Coxe' seems to be but a delicate substitute for the Muddy 
River of other writers, and has also disappeared from 
books and charts. Of all the great tributaries of the Mis- 
sissippi, however, the Ohio has been forced to bear the 
greatest variety of names, and yet it is most interesting to 
observe how its great beauty has invariably remained 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 53 

triumphant in the great contest. There is little in the 
uncouth word Ouabouskigon to remind us of more fa- 
miliar terms, and yet it is the first feeble effort to pro- 
nounce and write down the name which serves as a basis 
to our modern Wabash. Father Marquette, calling it in 
one place the Waboukigon, says elsewhere : " The Oua- 
bous-kigou, which runs into the Mississippi in the latitude 
of 36 degrees N.L." (Narrative II., 341.) The name 
was gradually softened down into the Houabache and 
Ouabache of Joutel (Journal, p. 322), and the Oubachi of 
Kip's Jesuit Missions. At that time, it appears, the 
river was called thus throughout its whole length, al- 
though Dumont already tells us that it had " two branches, 
of which one is called the Ouabache, and the other the 
St Jerome." (Mem. Hist. II., p. 294.) This seems to 
have led to endless confusion, as in the proclamation of 
Louis XIV., of the year 17 12, in which again, the Ohio 
itself is called the River St. Jerdme. It became, how- 
ever, soon known that the Wabash was but a branch or 
tributary of the Hb/iw, as Father Hennepin calls it, after 
the manner of the Iroquois. (Nouv. Decouv., p. 15.) 
In another place he calls it the Oyo or Ouyo, and else- 
where again, he speaks of " a great river, called IToio, 
which passes through the country." The explanation of 
the Indian name was well known to the earliest explorers 
already, for Joutel speaks of the river as the Belle Rivierl 
of the Iroquois, a river " exceeding beautiful, with per- 
fectly clear water and a very gentle current." (Journ., 
p. 322.) The great beauty of the noble river seems thus 



54 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

to have struck the untutored children of the wilderness 
as forcibly as the new colonists, and, thanks to this im- 
pression, the simple, sonorous names, though sadly dis- 
figured by the broad sound of the i, has safely come down 
to our generation. There was no slight danger once 
that the gentle, appropriate sounds should be exchanged 
for others of dire import ; the constant conflicts on its 
banks during the first efforts at settlement of a newly- 
opened country, and a severe, savage struggle between 
rival tribes of Indians, gave to the whole region a most 
mournful aspect in the minds of men, and the Bloody 
River was thought a fit name for a stream, the waters of 
which had often and often been crimsoned with the blood 
of many races. But the contest was short, and as soon 
as the fields once more bore golden harvest, and home- 
steads arose on every hillside and by every brook, the 
blessings of peace wiped out the sad memories of by-gone 
days, and the river was once more the Ohio, the Beauti- 
ful River. The Indians also seem, at one time, to have 
thought of bestowing a new name upon the noble stream ; 
for many years the Delawares and kindred tribes spoke 
of it as the Alleghany, a term meaning here, as in the case 
of the mountain range, merely fine or long. The name 
was soon appropriated to the river now known as the 
Alleghany, and thus, much unavoidable confusion was 
avoided. The Ohio escaped a still more invidious dis- 
tinction — that of becoming the Northern boundary of the 
United States. During the negotiations of the Peace of 
Paris, the British Commission strongly urged this frontier 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 



55 



line, and Benjamin Franklin, for reasons of his own, sup- 
ported the enormous claim. Adams, however, and Jeffer- 
son, were violently opposed to such curtailment, little as 
the boundless value of the Northern lands could then be 
appreciated, and thus the calamity was averted. (I. Bur- 
net's Ohio.) 

The Arkansas River has its strangely accented name, 
evidently from the Indians, whom Father Marquette and 
Jolliet found at a village, which they called now Akatisea 
and now Akamsea. They lived here amid Sioux and 
Chickasaws, we are told, and spoke a language entirely 
different from that of the Algonquin tribes, with which 
the French travellers were well acquainted. This dif- 
ficulty seems to have appalled the latter, and on the 7th 
of July, 1673, tne y turned their bark homeward and sailed 
back without having seen the lower part of the river. 
Joutel also visited these Indians, and was greatly delighted 
upon his approach to the village to find there a tall cross, 
which his pious predecessors had erected. It was " a 
great comfort," he tells us, " to him and his companions, 
after so much fatigue and suffering," when they saw the 
great Christian emblem at Accanca, in the month of June, 
1687. Father Membre is the first to spell the name 
Akansas, and it is by no means unlikely that the ten- 
dency of Americans to insert an inorganic y after an open 
a may alone have led to the present pronunciation. The 
place gains additional interest from the fact that it was 
probably not far from the Indian village of Guachoya, 
where the ill-fated De Soto had breathed his last nearly 
a hundred and thirty years before. 



56 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Still greater confusion reigned for long years in the 
minds of men concerning the last great tributary of the 
Mississippi. It was frequently confounded with the 
Arkansas, and at other times designated by the names 
of its principal branches. The first writer who mentions 
it, is the Sieur Joutel, in his Journal, and he speaks of it 
after the manner of all the early discoverers, as the River 
des Oumas — the Indians, who lived on its banks. They 
were, in all probability, the Maumee or Oumiami of other 
writers, since long afterwards, Dumont still calls the river 
by its ancient name, E.iviere de Mdme on des Oumas." 
(Mem. Hist., p. 37.) Its present title of Red River ap- 
pears, however, almost simultaneously, for while Dumont 
calls it also Riviere de la Sublormier\ it is by other 
French writers referred to as the Riviere Roi(ge, the Col- 
orado of the Spanish. The red sand over which it flows, 
through a large part of its course, was too striking a fea- 
ture to be overlooked, and hence the early preference 
for the picturesque name. The river furnishes us another 
evidence of the fact that on our continent also the French 
have signally failed in all attempts to establish permanent 
colonies ; for while the great inland States, such as Ken- 
tucky and Ohio, were yet utterly unknown to the English, 
the Valley of the Mississippi was already enlivened by a 
chain of forts held by French garrisons. The Red River 
had its master as early as the year 17 15, stationed in a 
fort, thirty-five leagues from its mouth, and controlling a 
number of powerful tribes in that remote region ! But a 
few years only passed away, and not a trace remained of 
French rule. 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 57 

The strange vicissitudes and romantic incidents which 
make the history of the Hidden River, during nearly a 
whole century, one of the most attractive features in the 
annals of our country, lend, at least, occasionally a like 
interest to certain localities on its banks. Thus, few of 
us can well help envying Father Hennepin the strange 
wonder and deep awe that must have filled his soul, when, 
after having been the first to behold the gigantic cata- 
racts at Niagara, he was led to discover, in like manner, 
the great falls of the Mississippi. It must be borne in 
mind that they were far grander in those days than they 
are now : within the memory of men now living they have 
lost much of their height, and ere long, the rocky barrier 
that forces the river to plunge, fretting and fuming over 
the precipice, will be entirely worn away or removed by 
the hand of men. In those days, however, the falls were 
high and imposing — Hennepin speaks of fifty feet ; the 
mighty river fell over the rocks in vast foaming masses, 
and the thunder shook the air for miles and miles. In 
silent admiration the bold explorer stood for a while gaz- 
ing at the sublime spectacle, and then, in memory of the 
saint he had chosen to be the special patron of his daring 
enterprise, he named them the Falls of St. Anthony of 
Padua. The Indians, who then dwelt near the romantic 
spot, the Sioux, called the falls, in their musical language, 
Owahmmahy the Falling Waters, but the name passed 
away with the tribe. On a tree near the cataract the 
Franciscan monk engraved a rude emblem of the arms 
of France, and thus took solemn possession of the upper 



58 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

part of the great valley also in the name of his sover- 
eign. 

The falls were the natural end of his explorations, and 
he and his companions sailed down again, bent upon 
more discoveries. Unfortunately, they fell into the hands 
of savage Indians, who sadly ill-treated and nearly starved 
them ; torture and cruel death even were threatened, and 
when the captives reached the broad expanse of the Great 
River, now known as Lake Pepia, a strange, weird scene 
served to give it an ominous name. The Indians had 
made a halt here, to consult on the fate of their unhappy 
prisoners : the council was divided, some inclining to 
mercy, while others were clamorous for massacre. In 
this dilemma, the cruel party, " those who were for mur- 
thering us," Hennepin calls them, resorted to a strange 
measure to obtain the consent of the others. During a 
long dismal night they wept profusely, loudly, incessantly, 
in order to move their milder-hearted companions by their 
tears of distress ! Fortunately they did not succeed ; 
mercy prevailed, and the lives of the brave Frenchmen 
were spared. But the Lac des Pleurs, the Lake of Tears, 
was forever engraven on the memory of the travellers, and 
as such it appeared for generations on every French map 
and chart of the Valley of the Mississippi. 

Great St. Louis even, the Queen city of the West, had 
but a sad beginning. French settlers had sought new 
homes on the banks of the Great River, hoping to reap 
golden harvests from the rich bottom-lands and to gather 
precious peltry from the countless Indians around them. 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 



59 



Alas ! the soil refused bread, but gave them fevers, 
and the natives preferred robbery to honest trade. The 
poor colonists were soon stripped of all their possessions, 
and, unable to till the land, exposed to cruel suffering 
and brutal ill-treatment. Their sorrowful fate may be 
read in the names of their homes. There was Mistre, 
short and expressive, Crevecoeur, in token of broken hearts, 
Videpoche, (now Carondelet, six miles below St. Louis,) 
speaking of empty pockets, and Pain Court, suggestive 
of short commons. A strange blunder of a great writer 
furnishes us with the connecting link between the last- 
mentioned name and the great city which is now the very 
emblem of exuberant wealth and marvellous progress. 
When Volney visited the West, and recorded his experi- 
ences there, he found that " St. Louis or Pancore (sic) 
had about 500 inhabitants, of whom five or six were rich." 
To the Frenchman himself, Pain Court had become evi- 
dently unknown in the anglicized Pancore of later days ! 
The city had, however, then already begun its brilliant 
career ; from a mere trading-post, favorably situated in 
the centre of large and powerful tribes, and on that ac- 
count chosen, in 1763, by a French fur trader, ^aclede, it 
had rapidly grown into a town ; the Spaniards then forti- 
fied it in 1780, and soon it fulfilled the hopeful predic- 
tions of the first settlers, who had foretold its future 
greatness. Nearly opposite the beautiful city, where 
smooth, rocky precipices rise like artificial works of forti- 
fication, and gladden the eye with their gentle slopes, 
glowing in the rich green of rare turf, stands Monk's 



60 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Hill, once the only convent of Trappists in this country. 
(Brackenridge, Louisiana, p. 274.) In the year 1806, the 
first of the silent brethren came over and selected the 
beautiful spot for their ascetic place of penance ; soon 
other followers of La Trappe joined them, and a stately 
monastery arose on a lofty mound. But even as monks, 
the French failed to maintain their place amid the push- 
ing, restless English, by whom they were surrounded on 
all sides, and already in 1813 the handsome building and 
the rich lands in the ' American Bottom,' which they had 
tilled with their own hands, were sold and abandoned by 
their austere owners. They returned to their native land, 
which, amid all its rich beauties, has no spot more lovely 
than the one they left, and ere this generation passes 
away, their memory will be lost in the West, and the land, 
where they once lived and suffered, will know them no 
more. 

A strange river is the Mississippi in its wayward 
course down the great valley which it waters ; as if con- 
scious of a giant's power, it rushes headlong towards the 
sea, and, with a touch, moves aside all obstacles in its 
way. Here it cuts through a solid tongue of land in 
search of a shorter channel ■ there it spreads leisurely 
over avast plain on the right or the left, forsaking it; 
former bed ; and at other places it sweeps away islands or 
lifts up the homes of men and carries them whithersoever 
it pleases. Such was the fate of two memorable towns, 
St. Genevieve a:.d New Madrid. The former was the 
first town laid out in the State of Missouri, by French 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 6l 

settlers from Kaskashia, who here erected large and pro- 
fitable salt-works, and soon made their new abode the 
very picture of comfort and happiness. But a great flood 
occurred in 1782, the river rose, and ruthlessly swept 
away the whole town. Orchards, and a few ruins alone 
marked the spot, where the blooming village had once 
stood, in 1820. (Brackenridge, Louisiana, p. 229.) Since 
then, however, the town has been partly rebuilt, the 
memory of the Annee des Goux, as the fatal year was 
called, is fading away, and men eat and drink, marry and 
are given in marriage — till the flood comes and destroys 
them all once more ? Still sadder was the fate of New 
Madrid, for the Mississippi now literally flows over the 
houses of the ancient town, and the old grave- yard, with 
its touching memorials of long departed worthies, has ap- 
parently travelled from the State of Missouri to the State 
of Kentucky. 1 For, in 181 1, there came a terrible earth- 
quake, — the gigantic river rose in great perturbation, and 
by one vast effort swept away more than half of the whole 
country ! No wonder that pious enthusiasts saw the signs 
of approaching dissolution in the disaster, and that many 
were swallowed up by the rising waters as they lay pros- 
trate before their altars, imploring the aid of their saints 
and the mercy of the Most High. 

The most illustrious Indian tribe, in what was once 
Louisiana, and by far the most faithful ally of the nation 
that so long owned its rich lands, were the Natchez. 
They appear first as Nachie in Father Membre's account 
of the river, on which they lived, and from that day the 



62 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

name assumed a thousand fanciful disguises, safely emerg- 
ing at last in its present form. From their first meeting 
with Europeans, these brave and independent men seem 
to have inspired the new-comers with a feeling of esteem 
not void of awe, and whether in peace or in war, they 
always commanded the affection of their friends and the 
respect of their enemies. Inevitable fate, however, 
brought at last both parties face to face, and terrible wars 
ensued, during which, unfortunately, the savages often 
surpassed the warriors of France in valor, and the Chris- 
tians exceeded the Indians in brutal cruelty. Upon a 
noble bluff overhanging the Great River, the French cap- 
tain, Iberville, built in 17 14, a strong fort on the very 
spot where, fourteen years before, his matchless foresight 
had induced him solemnly to lay the corner-stone of a 
city. The fort received the romantic name of Fort 
Rosalie, in honor of the fair Countess of Pontchartrain, 
but it was soon to be baptized in blood. The place had 
been carefully chosen, partly on account of its command- 
ing position, and partly because in its immediate neigh- 
borhood lay the five principal villages of the Natchez, 
which could thus be easily held in check and maintained 
in faithful submission to the French Government. But 
the officers were haughty and licentious, the men intem- 
perate and careless, and thus it came about that in a 
dark November night, 1729, the Indians suddenly over- 
powered the garrison and brutally massacred even the 
women and children. Scions of noble houses, pious 
priests, brave soldiers tried in bloody wars from early 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 63 

youth, and tender ladies fresh from the court of France 
— all were involved in the sad tragedy. Louisiana was 
mourning from distant ice-bound Quebec to the mouth 
of the river, and for years lamentations and heart-rending 
sorrow filled countless unhappy homes in the fatherland. 
There was little to comfort the bereaved in the revenge 
which was soon taken, though the national honor was 
restored and the Natchez ceased to exist. " A renowned 
captain, Perier de Salvert, brother to the Governor of the 
colony, marched, in 1733, an imposing force into the land 
of the Indians ; he burnt their villages, defeated their 
armies, and at last took their great stronghold, an im- 
mense fastness west of the river. Those that were not 
killed on the spot, were carried in chains to New Orleans, 
and from thence^ sent as slaves to San Domingo. A few 
only escaped on the road, and found a refuge at Coosa ; 
they were all that remained to bear witness of the former 
greatness of the valiant Natchez. Fortunately, the name 
was preserved from oblivion by being transferred to the 
settlement, which gradually sprang up around the ancient 
fort, and the beautiful city on the banks of the Mississippi, 
recalls to us the memory of the most illustrious and most 
formidable among Southern Indians. 

One of those ready witted, rollicking adventurers, 
whose reckless courage and strange fate make the early 
history of New France read like a romance, had the 
good fortune of winning the favor of men high in power, 
and thus obtained a "concession," as it was called, 
wherever he might like to choose his abode. So he sailed 



64 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

up the river, merrily spending his time with a few boon 
companions, and leisurely looking out for some pleasant 
spot, not yet held by previous title, and promising a fair 
return for moderate labor, in rich harvests or precious 
metals. At last he found what he sought on a high bluff 
overhanging the river, on which a solitary cypress stood 
like a sentinel, ready to warn the unfortunate owners of 
the soil of the arrival of eager, invincible conquerors. 
He chose the beautiful hill with the rich bottom-lands at 
the foot, and built here, in 1722, the first house. The 
noble tree, with its prodigious size, its wide-spreading 
branches, which formed a vast baldachin on high, and its 
lofty trunk, rising clear from the ground to an immense 
elevation, and weird and woful with its red bark in the 
light of the setting sun, formed naturally the great land- 
mark of the new settlement. A facetious comrade 
having suggested what a fine walking-stick the great tree 
would make, the jest was carried out, and the place, now 
the capital of a State, ironically called Red Stick, or 
Baton Rouge. 

Farther down, where the river bends suddenly around 
a projecting miniature cape, and then spreads out its 
dark waters till they assume once more the form of a 
lake, an odd name reminds us forcibly of the days when 
the Hidden River still fully deserved its mysterious 
name. This is the English Turn. Nearly two centuries 
ago, a quaint, restless Englishman, whose prominent 
share in the early history of our country would amply 
repay more thorough examination, Dr. Daniel Coxe, sunt, 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 65 

upon his own account, two armed vessels southward on 
an exploring tour. One of these ships, a brigantine of 
sixteen guns, under a Captain Barr, was despatched for 
the special purpose of examining the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, to take soundings in the passes that lead from the 
bay into the river, and to sail up as high as might prove 
expedient. The vessel had accomplished the preliminary 
investigations, and was proudly sailing up-stream, the 
happy captain enjoying the delightful sense of triumph in 
discovering a vast river and adding magnificent territories 
to the realm of his sovereign, when lo and behold ! an- 
other armed vessel appears at the upper end of the appar- 
ent lake, and on its mast-head flies the white flag with the 
lilies of France ! Great was the Englishman's disap- 
pointment, but greater still his rage, when the French 
commander, the great De Bienville, with haughty civility, 
informed him that the river and the banks of the whole 
magnificent country belonged to his master, the King of 
France and Navarre, and that no British vessel could be 
allowed to sail in these waters ! There was nothing for 
it but to submit, and on that fatal day, the 20th Septem- 
ber, 1699, the locality received the name of the English 
Turn, which it still bears in our day. It lies in Plaqne- 
mine Parish, a district so named from a grove of per- 
simmon trees (plaquemines), which formerly stood upon 
the place where the first fort was erected ; the French 
settlers having been struck by the vinous sweetness of 
the novel fruit. 

The Great River leaves its last, and perhaps its rich- 
5 



66 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

est, blessing to the State and the city, which formed, for 
so many generations, the centre of French political life in 
New France. The former, long known to English ears 
as part of Carolana, and still so-called by Dr. Coxe, in 
1699, was from the beginning known to the French as 
Louisiana, bearing the proud name of the great Louis. 
Although Charlevoix claims the honor of thus naming it 
for La Salle (Nouv. Fr. I., p. 511), it is doubtful whether 
the word can be found in any work preceding Father 
Hennepin's Description of Louisiana, printed in Paris, 
1683. It was in that year that three bold adventurers 
erected a cross in the name of the Church, and by its 
side, a stone column, in honor of their sovereign, and 
thus solemnly proclaimed to the amazed wilderness the 
right of Louis XTV. to rule over all the lands of America 
lying west of the Alleghany Mountains ! Already in 1699 
the first French settlers came over ; Iberville was appoin- 
ted Governor of the new colony, and Old Biloxi, at the 
mouth of the Lost River, was made the capital. 

The choice of the first settlement soon proved to have 
been injudicious, and the seat of government was moved 
to New Biloxi. In the meantime, a few straggling huts 
had been erected on the Hidden River, at a place where 
it bent in the form of a half moon, and thus seemed to 
offer unusual advantages for traffic. On a fine summer 
day, in the year 1728, Bienville, the enterprising, ener- 
getic commander, the very soul of the colony, came down 
the river accompanied by some fifty persons, carpenters 
and galley-slaves, and stopped at this place, which his 



THE HIDDEN RIVER. 67 

far-seeing wisdom had long since selected as the site of 
the coming city. Trees were at once cut down, fields 
were cleared, houses erected, and a fort added, and the 
new town named after the Regent of France, the Duke 
of Orleans. (Charlevoix, Nouv. Fr. III., 434.) Thus the 
crescent city received, as Bancroft says, " the name of 
New Orleans from the prince who denied God but trem- 
bled at a star." (Hist. III., 352.) As if evil omens 
must needs multiply on this occasion, the most unfortu- 
nate of modern financiers, John Law, who ruined the 
French in purse, as the dissolute prince did in morals, 
conceived a special fancy for the new colony, and in the 
same year sent out eight hundred men. They started 
from La Rochelle, under the auspices of the Mississippi 
Company, and reached their new homes only to learn, 
upon landing, that the gorgeous bubble had burst, their 
patron had fled, and their prospects were blasted. They 
scattered to the four winds, the large number of Germans 
among them alone remaining in and near the promised 
city, and thus adding a few new houses to the huts of the 
" voyageurs " that had come down from the distant land of 
the Illinois. The admirable judgment of Bienville soon 
proved not to have been at fault ; the town grew in spite 
of fevers, overflows and hurricanes, and became already, 
in 1722, the capital of the new empire. Even then, how- 
ever, the beginnings were but small as yet : the houses 
were built of cypress logs, the only church did not hold 
the increasing number of worshippers, and great was the 
joy of the colonists when a cargo of damsels was announ- 



68 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

ced to be in the offing. They were the third load of girls 
sent out to supply the urgent wants of the settlers, and 
as they were all of good character and each endowed with 
a small chest to hold their property, these " Filles de la 
Cassette," as they were called, " had no time to be tired, 
for they were married instantly," says the quaint old 
chronicler. 

The river, now no longer the Hidden River, but exult- 
ing in the proud name of the Fkuve St. Louis, after leav- 
ing the city, finally passes down to the gulf, half lost in 
marshes, sandy low-lands and impenetrable canebrakes. 
Far down, on its north-eastern pass, there rises the last 
landmark, a beacon, which has been pointing out the 
path to the weary and puzzled mariner ever since the 
year 1722, when the first balise (beacon) was erected 
there on piles, and a small fort was built in like manner, 
called the Poste de la Balise, to protect the entrance of 
the river. Below this last habitation the river may still 
be traced for some distance by the color of its waters, 
contrasting strongly with those of the gulf, and then it be- 
comes once more, what it had been for nearly a century 
after its existence had been first ascertained, a Hidden 
River. 




OUR FIRST ROMANCE, 
in. 

HATEVER power we may 
possess to put ourselves, in 
imagination, in the place of 
others, and thus to realize, in 
some degree, what they may 
have felt and thought at cer- 
tain times, no effort of our minds, no straining of our 
fancy can well bring home to us the sensations that must 
have filled the heart of the " Emperor of Virginia" when 
he was, at the age of sixty, for the first time confronted 
by men who came in floating and winged houses, and 
commanded the thunder and the lightning. Powhatan, 
as he was popularly called by the English adventurers, 
from the name of one of his residences, Paw't-hanne, the 
Falls in the Stream, had been a chief by inheritance, the 
head of a powerful, though not numerous, tribe, known 
by his own name, and roaming unchallenged over vast 
hunting-grounds in Wingandacoa. But ambition had 
early inflamed his mind, and he had become a conqueror 
of great renown, subjugating one tribe after another, until 
he knew no rival from the Blue Mountains in the West, 



yo ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

to the Blue Ocean towards morning. Unlike other chief- 
tains, moreover, he held his lands by an unusual but safe 
tenure : in every part of his paternal domain and in every 
one of the newly-conquered districts he had dwellings 
abundantly large to receive him and his retinue, and 
amply stocked with provisions for his entertainment. 
Thus his power had increased and his fame had spread 
farther and farther, from year to year ; with wondrous 
tact and matchless skill he had succeeded in not only 
holding his sway undisputed over numerous tribes, more 
subtle and cunning than the Arabs of the desert, and 
spurning, in their independence, the very shadow of re- 
straint, but he had actually united them, by the prestige 
of his valor and the power of his address, into one great 
union. To this new empire, far greater than that of 
King Philip of Mount Hope, and fully equal to the do- 
minion of Tuscaloosa, the Black Warrior of the Mobilians, 
he had given his name, and thus it was that ruler, and 
nation and river, all bore alike the same designation. 
His fame rises in its vast range and unequalled power 
far above that of any other Indian monarch whose name 
has been recorded in our annals. He had, in the vast 
territory over which he ruled, by the mere terror of his 
name, no rival and no peer ; his nearest neighbors, the 
powerful confederacy of the Manakins and Manahoacks, 
trembled when he threatened to attack them, and the 
dread of the formidable Sachem was felt alike at the 
northern lakes and on the banks of the mysterious west- 
ern sea, the Hidden River of the Spaniards. He was 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 7 1 

now nearly sixty years old, but still in the full vigor of 
manhood, and showing no trace of the great efforts he had 
made and the sufferings he had endured. Suddenly 
news was brought to him that strange men, with white 
faces and features half hid in bushy hair, had landed upon 
the coast, and were, even now, boldly pushing their boats 
up the great river. They had come in canoes as large 
as his most spacious houses, which glided over the waters 
without paddle or oar, by the aid of gigantic birds' wings, 
and kept concealed in their close hold the terrors of thun- 
der and the power of lightning. His brave heart never 
quaked for a moment ; but in his mind, no doubt, arose 
vague memories of ancient traditions and weird legends 
he had heard in his childhood, of white men who were 
to come from the rising sun and to conquer the land of 
his fathers. News spread fast among his brethren, and 
he had long since been told of efforts that had been made 
elsewhere by early invaders, from the days when the first 
fishermen appeared on the banks of Newfoundland to the 
year when De Soto marched his ill-fated army from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi. 

It was in this startling emergency that the manly form 
and venerable majesty of the great Indian hero appeared 
to greatest advantage. There were no poets and no his- 
torians to record the exploits of his youth and his man- 
hood, which might have rivalled the deeds of eastern 
sheiks and Christian champions, but all the more strik- 
ing is the splendor in which his sun set, and the deep in- 
delible impression he made upon the haughty conquerors. 



72 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Cunningly guessing the true purpose of the new-comers, 
he received them with courtesy, but also with caution, and 
though fully determined in his heart to renew his youth, 
and to fight once more the most terrible enemy he had 
yet encountered, he allowed no word to escape and no 
act to be done that might betray his purpose. And thus 
he continued to the end, the only one of his race whose 
personal majesty was never violated by wanton insult, 
respected by those who knew him well, and dreaded by 
all whom he met as an enemy. The very men among 
the English who tried their best to make him feel his 
inferiority to European monarchs, and endeavored to profit 
by his simplicity and ignorance, were forced to acknowl- 
edge their defeat. Thus, a Captain Newport, the sponsor 
of Newport News of Virginia, went up to one of his resi- 
dences once, to bring him rich presents from the " Queenes 
dread Majestie," hoping to impress him with the glory 
of his sovereign, and to drive a good trade for his pri- 
vate benefit. Captain John Smith, who knew the Indian 
and his race thoroughly, had in vain tried to dissuade the 
covetous Captain from making the visit and delivering 
the presents. He was fully aware that a basin and ewer, 
a bed and other furniture could be at best but curiosities 
for the stern old savage, and he foresaw, with instructive 
shrewdness, that the proposed plan of crowning the chief 
after the manner Old World monarchs was likely to end 
in dire dismay. But his eager countrymen had high hopes, 
and were so deeply impressed with the vast superiority 
of an English sailor over an Indian Emperor, that they 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 73 

insisted upon going through all the ceremonies they had 
planned. Here is their account of the scenes, which must 
have been disgusting to the noble old man, and irresistibly 
ludicrous to the unbiassed among the spectators. " His 
scarlet cloke and apparrell were, with much adoe, put on 
him, being persuaded they would not hurt him. But a 
foule trouble there was to mak him kneele to receive his 
crowne ; he not knowing the maiestie nor the meaning 
of a crowne, nor the bending of knee, endured so many 
persuasions, examples, and instructions as tyred them 
hard. At last, by leaning hard on his shoulders, he a 
little stooped, and three having the crown in their hands, 
put it on his head — when by the warning of a pistoll the 
Boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that the 
king started up in a horrible feare, till he saw that all was 
right." ... " Then remembering himself to congratulate 
their kindness, he gave his old shoes and his mantel to 
Captain Newport." On another occasion, when haughty 
Englishmen sent him word to come to great James city, 
to receive some presents which had been sent to him by 
their king, he replied in the simple consciousness of his 
dignity : "If your king have sent me presents, I also am 
a king, and this is my land. Eight days will I stay to 
receive them. Your father is to come to me, not I to him, 
nor to your fort." For, disguise it as we may, and poor, 
heathen savage though he was, he did not lack that 
divinity that " doth hedge a king." It shone forth in his 
acts, for he never did an ignoble thing, and stands ever 
before us in the simple majesty of a king, without a single 



74 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

act of tyranny or a moment's forgetfulness, and remaining 
to his death without a rival even among the gallant and 
adventurous men who then laid the foundation of a great 
and powerful country. It must have shone forth even in 
the tone of his voice and his personal appearance, for all 
who speak of him — enemies and supercilious judges 
though they were, agree in describing his dignity as im- 
posing, and one of them adds pointedly : " When he list- 
eth, his will is a law and must be obeyed ; not only as a 
king but as halfe a God they esteeme him. It is strange 
to see with what greate feare and adoration all these peo- 
ple (his Werowances or Huaker chieftains,) doe obey 
this Powhatan. For at his feete they present whatsoever 
he commandeth, and at the least frowne of his brow, their 
greatest spirits will tremble with feare." 

Nor was he so entirely without the pomp and circum- 
stance of real royalty as those seem to have imagined 
who have written about him as a " poor Indian." He 
had, as we have seen, a number of stately residences in 
various parts of his dominion, and some of these were 
not only of imposing size, but richly adorned. His prin- 
cipal residence seems to have been at Weroworomeos, a 
word simply meaning the Werowance's House, the same 
as the Wricacomacs of Maryland and Roger Williams 
Sachimma-comocko, the Sachem's House, which E. 
Winslow, in his Good News from New England, spoke 
of as, " Sachims-Comacs, for so they call the Sachem's 
place." It was built on the banks of the York River, 
where it broadens out into a vast estuary, and here he 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 75 

dwelt in barbaric state and splendor. It was to this 
place brave Captain Smith was brought by his captors, 
and here his life was saved by the most romantic incident 
in our early history. The place is still pointed out to the 
curious traveller, who is sure to visit Powhatan's chimney, 
a ruin built of the shelly conglomerate which abounds in 
the neighborhood, and now the only trace of the mansion 
erected for him by German workmen, whom the English 
settlers employed for the purpose, in order to please the 
grim old king. And he was pleased, for we are told, in 
the quaint words of a contemporary writer, how he would 
stand for hours, turning the key in the front door of his 
house, and, no doubt, wondering in his heart at the strange 
power possessed by the tiny instrument in his hand, to 
admit or exclude him at will. Known now as Timberuck 
Point, in Gloucester County, the place was long the an- 
cient seat of the Mann family, and near by is Shelly, 
so-called from the immense heaps of oyster shells, which 
show that it must have once been a favorite resort of the 
Indians. Powhatan itself, the place called by the great 
chieftain's name, was little more than a hunting-lodge, on 
a beautiful eminence, overlooking James River, and a few 
miles below the present city of Richmond. Even here, 
however, all ceremony was not laid aside, for we are told 
that " About his person ordinarily attended a guard of 
forty or fifty of the tallest men his country affords. Every 
night, upon the four quarters of his house, are four sen- 
tinells, each from the other a slight shoot, and at every 
half houre, one from the corps on guard doth hollow, 



j6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

shaking his lips with his finger between them, unto whom 
every sentinell doth answer round from his stand." When 
the weary old king became disgusted with the trickery 
and treachery of his new and unwelcome neighbors, he 
sold this place to John Smith, who considered it justly 
the " strongest and most pleasant place he had seen in 
the country, and from this reason they called it Nonsuch." 
His plans to establish a colony here were however frus- 
trated ; although he could offer the settlers a number of 
" dry houses, near two hundred acres of land, cleared and 
ready to plant, with a Savage Fort, ready built," his sub- 
ordinates were utterly unfit for the task, and the settlement 
was abandoned. The place became subsequently the 
seat of the Mayor, and is, to this day, considered one of 
the most beautiful sites on the magnificent river that once 
bore the great Indian's name. 

At Orapakes, again, a residence farther inland, Pow- 
hatan had his vast store-houses, one of which seems es- 
pecially to have attracted the attention of the English by 
its treasures and its quaint appearance. For on the four 
corners of this immense building, filled to the roof with 
" arms, skins, copper, pearls, and other valuables," stood 
four huge images as sentinels, — representing a bear, a 
dragon, a leopard, and a giant, " all made evile favoured - 
ly, according to their best workmanship." Kiskiask, an- 
other of the great monarch's favorite seats, underwent in 
its name a series of most strange variations ; an Act of 
Assembly mentions it thus : " Be it also enacted and con- 
firmed, that the parish of Chescake be called Hampton 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 77 

Parish " (4th of Sept., 1632), and from thence the transi- 
tion was easy enough to its popular designation as 
Cheesecake ! 

Now, this great king had a large family — not less 
than twenty sons and ten daughters, of none of whom 
any record is made in the accounts of the day, as the 
chieftain's power and dignity did not descend to his chil- 
dren, but to one of his brothers. Besides these thirty 
descendants, one daughter is mentioned by Swachey, " a 
young one, and a great darling," and finally she " whom 
Captain Smith intituled the Numparell of Virginia." In 
his famous letter to Queen Anne, the wife of James I., 
recommending the newly-married Indian princess to her 
kindness, he speaks of her as " the king's most dear and 
well beloved-daughter." Her name was originally Ma- 
toax or Matoaka, but her father's people always called 
her Pocahontas — so at least, it sounded to dull and inat- 
tentive English ears — for fear that the new-comers might 
learn to know her real name, and thus be enabled to in- 
flict some injury upon their great darling. (Purchas IV., 
1769.) How strangely this reminds us of the supersti- 
tions in olden times, when even Rome had her sacred 
and secret name of Valentia, and the name of the Lord 
could not be uttered by profane lips ! The mysterious 
Matoax, for which no etymology has yet been found, 
because its sound was probably altogether changed by 
careless speakers, survives to this day in the land of the 
princess. Sometimes it is borne by persons whose parents 
cherish the old traditions of their native State ; at other 



78 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

times by localities like the famous Matoax, one of the 
four original towns which afterwards combined to form 
the city of Petersburg, and a place full of interest to the 
patriot. For here John Randolph, if not born in the 
house, spent at least those early days of his boyhood to 
which he looked back so often in after life, with many 
a sigh and melancholy regret. Of the first years of the 
famous princess we know, of course, nothing ; but when 
she first appears on the stage of the great and exciting 
drama that was then enacted in Virginia, she dazzles us 
like a meteor by the splendor of the romance and the 
sublimity of her heroism. We all know how gallant John 
Smith had fallen into the hands of the incensed Indians, 
and being forsaken by friends and allies, was about to be 
sacrificed in the presence of the king. He had been 
carried by his delighted captors with a rapidity that 
would alone have unnerved an ordinary man to Wero- 
wocomow, the distant residence of their monarch, on the 
northern side of York River, and with equal haste had 
been ordered to be brought to the palace. In the vast, 
but gloomy, ill-lighted house, where the stern, silent as- 
sembly of hideously painted warriors filled every nook 
and corner, the light fell from above, with startling clear- 
ness upon the grim old chief as he sat, in his imperturba- 
bly native dignity upon a couch of cunningly woven mats, 
and leaned against a pillow richly embroidered with pearls 
and precious white beads. Even thus sitting, he dis- 
played his tall, well-proportioned form to advantage, and 
showed in his brilliant eye that, in spite of his age, there 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 79 

was much fire still left burning under the snow-white hair, 
and that muscles and sinews were strong enough yet to 
carry on wars and meet the most formidable of foes. 

Immediately by his side sat his wives, for like King 
Solomon he had many, and around them two hundred of 
his highest courtiers, beyond whom were crowded the most 
renowned warriors of all the nations over which he ruled. 
In the dim distance, near the entrance, stood the small 
sturdy prisoner, unbound and unfettered, but well guarded 
by a thousand watchful eyes, sternly facing his fate, and 
yet, in all probability, not despairing of his life, for he 
had been in deadly peril too often not to know how many 
chances there are ever open to a truly bold and resolute 
man who keeps his presence of mind. The savage king 
casts a mere glance in his direction, and instantly two 
huge stones are brought in, and, with much labor and 
trouble, placed before his simple throne. Another glance 
from the bloodshot eye, and " as many as could lay 
hand " on the hated foreigner seize him, and drag him 
impetuously through the excited but immovable crowd ; 
and ere he can well remember what has happened, he 
finds himself forced down, with his head lying on one of 
the stones, and a number of grotesque figures in terrible 
paint and apparel standing over him " ready to beat out 
his braines with their clubs." No doubt the bold captain 
then bethought himself of saying his last prayer, for he 
could not even look up and try the magic power of his 
eye that had so often, in like perils, done him marvellous 
service, nor could he raise his persuasive voice to enchain 



80 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

and soften, as of old, the hearts of his fierce enemies. 
But all of a sudden, a low, subdued cry of amazement 
escapes from a thousand wrought-up hearts ; a slight flutter 
is heard, and in the next moment a young girl, a mere 
child, " got his head in her arms and laid her owne upon 
his to save him from death." When the prisoner glanced 
at her he beheld what must have looked to him little less 
than a vision ; a fair, frail maiden, with her long black 
hair hanging loose around her child-like face, her eyes 
streaming with tears, and her whole attitude expressive 
of passionate entreaty and urgent prayer. It seems that 
even the stern old king had a secret tenderness for his 
favorite child, for it was Pocahontas, the " king's dearest 
daughter," who thus interceded, and with a gentle gesture 
of the hands he bade the executioners loosen their hold, 
and gave the captive to the tears of his child. The 
whole scene, dramatic as it appears in our stern matter- 
of-fact age, was still perfectly natural in all its simple 
features, and although Smith himself did not afterwards 
allude to it, caring little perhaps to remind his jealous 
rivals and restless detractors how he owed his life to the 
intercession of a child, we have a full and authentic ac- 
count of all that occurred in a letter written by " Thomas 
Studley, the first Cape Merchant in Virginia, Robert 
Fenton, Edward Harrington, and John Smith," as re- 
corded in Purchas. 

From that day there was a bond of love between the 
renowned adventurer and the poor Indian princess, which 
death alone could break asunder. He never forgot that 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 8 1 

he owed his life, under God, to her tender heart and fear- 
less intercession, and never spoke of her in the intimacy 
of his companions and friends, or in the formal appeal to 
the Queen's Majesty, except in terms of warmest affection 
and sincere respect. She returned his love with rare con- 
stancy from the day when she met his grateful look with 
blushing brow for the first time in her life, to that touch- 
ing scene when, in a distant land and amid the very 
enemies of her race, who were fast conquering the land 
of her birth, John Smith would see in her only a king's 
daughter, and refused to let her call him father as here- 
tofore. She said to him, with a well-set countenance : 
" I tell you then I will, and you shall call mee childe and 
so I will bee for ever and ever your countryman." 

Nor was this a matter of sentiment only. With a 
woman's true and entire devotion to him whom her heart 
has once chosen as a master, Pocahontas henceforth loved 
the countrymen of Smith as she loved him. She became 
the earthly Providence of the infant colony, and watched 
over its wants and anticipated its perils with an energy 
and a perseverance which are astounding in a girl of her 
tender age. For although the year of her birth is un- 
known, we read of her as "a girl of tenne or twelve years 
old, which not only for features, countenance, and ex- 
pression much exceeded any of the rest of her people, 
but for wit and spirit was the only nonpareil of the coun- 
try." The annals of the early settlements are full of her 
acts of kindness and devotion. At one time, when Cap- 
tain Ratcliffe, moved by the almost insane thirst of gain, 



82 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

that seems to have possessed the English adventurers of 
that day, had gone up into the Indian country, on Pow- 
hatan's fair possessions, and every one of the thirty or 
forty men who had come with him to trade were murdered ; 
she rescued the only survivor, a boy named Henry Spil- 
man, from instant death. He is represented to us as "a 
young gentleman, well descended," who, having been 
carefully protected by his patroness " among the Potow- 
macks," proved himself afterwards eminently useful to 
Captain Argall. The latter had been sent by Lord de 
la War, then Governor of Virginia, in an hour of dire 
need, to obtain provisions from the Indians. Fortunately 
he met the English youth, and by his acquaintance and 
help " received such good usage from this kind people, 
that his vessel was soon freighted with corn, with which 
he returned to Jamestown," relieving the colony from the 
imminent danger of starvation. At another time — in 
1609 — she accidentally discovered that a conspiracy had 
been formed to destroy Jamestown and to exterminate 
the English by one fell blow. There was danger in delay, 
for the day for the surprise and the massacre was fixed 
and close at hand ; but undaunted, the brave girl escaped 
from the jealous vigilance of her father, and on a dark 
and stormy night she hastened, alone and unprotected, 
through dismal forest and pathless morasses, to the place 
where her friends slept in thoughtless security. At the 
first news, the heart of the colonists sank within them 
and they gave themselves up for lost ; but when they 
heard what the fearless Indian maid had done for them, 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 83 

how she had ventured at midnight through a thousand 
dangers to warn them of their danger, " this so revived 
their dead spirits, especially the love of Pocahontas," 
that they armed themselves instantly, and thus defeated 
the plans of their subtle enemies. 

How much she was yet of a child and given to child- 
ish pastimes, we see from a letter by Captain John Smith, 
who, always candid and even naively ingenuous, tells us 
frankly about her all he knows, without weighing the 
matter or thinking how his words might hereafter be mis- 
interpreted by skeptic minds and less grateful generous 
hearts. " Jamestown," he says in his letter to the Queen, 
" with her wild train, she as freely frequented as her 
father's habitation, and she, next under God, during the 
time of two or three years, was still the instrument to pre- 
serve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion. 
. . . The most and least I can do is to tell you this, and 
rather because of her being so great a spirit, however her 
stature." Carefully overlooking the noble tribute paid 
by the gallant adventurer to the Indian maiden, William 
Strachey, " first Secretary of the colony," in his " Historie 
of Travaile into Virginia Britannica," only remembered 
the girl's visits " with her wild train," and forthwith added 
to the account such details as would make it more at- 
tractive to certain m nds and less creditable to the prin- 
cess. " Pocahanta, a well-featured, but wanton young 
girl, Powhattan's daughter, some tymes resorting to our 
fort, would get the boyes forth with her unto the market- 
place and make the wheele, falling on with their handes, 



84 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

turning up their heeles upwards, vvhome she would follow 
and wheele so herself, naked as she was, all the fort 
over." If the account be true — and it must be admitted 
that there is no urgent reason to doubt the statement — 
she was probably a mere child, brought up in the wild 
woods, and utterly unfamiliar with the manners and 
customs of the English. As it is supposed that she 
was born in 1595, and Wm. Strachey was Secretary in 
1610, this is at least possible. If she was older, so much 
the greater shame for the settlers, who encouraged the 
Indian boys and girls in such games and utterly forgot 
what they owed to themselves as well as to the maid, who 
must, in that case, have already been known to them as 
their kind friend and protector. Our great historian cer- 
tainly did not credit the spirit of the secretary's remarks, 
for he mentions Jamestown as the place "where Poca- 
hontas had sported in the simplicity of her innocence," 
(Hist, of the U. S. II., p. 227,) and thus follow the 
opinions entertained by Virginia's faithful chronicler, 
Burk, who speaks of her as one " whose soul Nature 
formed on one of her kindest and noblest models." 

With all her efforts, and by all her ingenuity she could, 
however, naturally not always prevent misunderstandings 
between her own people and those whom she had chosen 
as her friends and her brethren, and her heart must have 
bled at the frequent butcheries which occurred in the 
next following years. At the same time, her father's 
patience seems to have been exhausted, or perhaps he 
was compelled, for reasons of state policy, to make an 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. ' 85 

end to her frequent interpositions : to avoid disgrace, she 
disappeared for a time from the scene. Her friend, Cap- 
tain Smith, having, in the meanwhile, left Virginia, she 
felt on that account also, less and less inclination to visit 
the colony, and thus she quietly withdrew to the home 
of a near kinsman, Iapasaw, who resided at Patawomeke. 
For two years she lived here in utter seclusion, sadly 
missing, no doubt, the society of those she had learned 
to appreciate, and sighing for another opportunity to be- 
come useful to the good people of the colony. She was 
not destined, however, long to remain here inactive and 
concealed from the world, for while she fancied that she 
had been forgotten by all and was living unknown among 
her kindred, she was, in reality, first and foremost in the 
thoughts of one of her foreign friends, and at the same 
time the subject of much speculation, and even of a bold 
conspiracy with the settlers themselves. 

A year or two before, there had come to America, in com- 
pany with Sir Thomas Gates, the Governor of Virginia, a 
young man of modest pretensions, but mentioned as "an 
honest and discreet " young Englishman, called John Rolfe. 
What position he occupied does not appear from the 
annals of the time, and it may well be doubted if he was 
anything more than one of the numerous " gentlemen " 
who then sought their fortune in the new Eldorado. He 
seems to have met with the Indian princess frequently 
at Jamestown, for John Smith tells us that he had "long 
before this been in love with Pocahontas, and she with 
him," but as yet no words had been spoken and no plans 



86 ' ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

had been formed by the young man. Now, however, in 
the year 1612, a scheme was concocted by the colonists 
at Jamestown, which speaks little to the honor of the 
settlers and the views they had of the good faith due to 
the Indians and especially to her, to whom so many 
among them owed the preservation of their lives. This 
was nothing less than a plan to entice Pocahontas, by 
stratagem, back to Jamestown, and to hold her there as a 
hostage, in order to extort a number of special favors 
from her unfortunate, father. Captain Samuel Argall, 
half pirate, half sailor, and afterwards known as Sir 
Samuel Argall, engaged readily to sail up the river to the 
place where Iapasaw lived, and to bring the poor Indian 
maid back with him to the fort. John Rolfe volunteered 
to accompany him in this expedition, though there is no 
reason to suspect that he now or thereafter speculated 
upon the influence he might gain over the young girl, and 
through her, over her father, the king. The treacherous 
plan succeeded beyond expectation. A copper-kettle 
was the price paid for the Emperor's daughter, and for 
this precious article Iapasaw and his rascally wife be- 
trayed the child of their chieftain into the hands of the 
enemies of their race. On the pretext of an eager curios- 
ity to see ArgalPs vessel, they proposed to their unsus- 
pecting guest a visit to the strangers. As soon as the 
poor girl was in the cabin, she was informed of her cap- 
tivity, " whereat the old Jew and his wife began to howle 
and cry as fast as Pocahontas," in order to make her be- 
lieve that they were innocent of the betrayal, and then 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 87 

they hurriedly left the boat, carrying with them the bright 
shining copper-kettle. The poor prisoner, overcome with 
surprise and grief, was carried down to Jamestown, and 
messengers were sent at once to her father to propose 
negotiations for her exchange. But much as Powhatan 
loved his child, he was too wise to be caught in the snare, 
and sternly refused to do anything for her release. In 
the meantime a great change had been wrought in the 
gentle captive ; the wild, wanton girl of former days had 
grown up into a quiet, dignified maiden, and now Chris- 
tian influences were brought to bear upon her, while at 
the same time her heart's deepest feelings were for the 
first time aroused. 

The minister of Bermunda Hundred, the Rev. W. Whit- 
aker, a man of eminent piety and rare good sense, saw 
the golden opportunity that was thus offered to him and 
at once discreetly but zealously, set to work to " win a soul 
for Christ." The early influence of her intercourse with 
Captain John Smith seems to have prepared the way for 
his kind words and gentle teachings, and he soon had 
the joy to receive her into the church of which he was so 
faithful a shepherd. All accounts agree that she was 
well instructed in the great truths of Christianity, and her 
whole life afterwards proved that they had sunk deep 
into her heart and changed her whole nature. This 
change was so striking that even at that time the letters 
of Sir Thomas Dale, the Lieutenant-Governor, and of 
the pious minister himself overflowed with expressions of 
wonder and gratitude. One of the later letters, dated 



88 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

June, 1 6 14, refers to these days, saying : " How careful 
they were to instruct her in Christianity, and how capable 
and desirous she was thereof ; after she had been some- 
time thus tutored, she never had desire to go to her 
father, nor could well endure the society of her own 
nation . . . and she openly renounced her country's 
idolatry, confessed the faith of Christ, and was baptized." 
She received in baptism the name of Rebecca, and be- 
came henceforth known as Lady Rebecca in acknowledg- 
ment of her rank as a king's daughter. 

At the same time the young, enthusiastic Englishman 
improved his opportunity to win her affections, and 
though long too timid and bashful to confess his love, at 
last made a touching appeal to his friend and patron, the 
Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, in a letter still extant. 
In words full of passion and all aglow with ardent admir- 
ation he acknowledges his love, and humbly asks per- 
mission to address the princess, and, if she should con- 
sent, to make her his own. Here again not a trace of 
selfish views or mercenary hopes is to be discerned. 
The letter was so evidently the expression of his true 
feelings, and his whole subsequent conduct proved so 
fully the earnestness of his attachment, that Sir Thomas 
Dale says : " the true affection she constantly bare her 
husband was much, and the strange apparitions, wild 
passions he endured for her love, as he deeple protested, 
was wonderful." In another statement we are told that 
"her affection to her husband was extremely constant 
and true, and he, on the other hand, underwent great 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 89 

torment and pain out of his violent passion and tender 
solicitude for her." (Stith Va. p. 132.) There was most 
assuredly too much of stern reality and of truthful sim- 
plicity in the colonial life of those days to allow us 
to look in such descriptions for romantic exaggeration or 
deliberate misstatements. There is no evidence whatever 
to be met with in the life of the two lovers, that Master 
John Rolfe wooed Pocahontas for any other purpose 
than that of simply making her his beloved wife. 

The Governor's assent was given, and in his own 
house at Varina the happy lovers were united in the 
month of April, 1613. It must have been a strange and 
striking scene when the two representatives of the Old 
and New World thus stood side by side to utter mutual 
vows of love, and thus to typify unconsciously the new 
bond that was gradually to connect the two great 
continents with each other. There stood the simple, 
manly form of the fair young European, simple and un- 
pretending, but every inch, as the Governor said, " an 
honest gentleman, and of good behaviour," and by his 
side, her hand in his, the dusky daughter of America, 
showing in her high cheek bones, her rather gloomy face 
and her lanky hair, as her portrait painted in London pre- 
sents her to us, the characteristics of another race 
and another world. But although even her most ardent 
admirers have to admit that she never could have been 
a beauty, according to our ideas of beauty, there was, 
we are told, a wonderful charm in her face, which was 
not due to regularity of features or brilliancy of complex- 



90 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

ion, but solely to the nobitity of the soul that shone in 
every line. Her brilliant eyes, her winning smile, the 
sweet simplicity of her whole expression were irresistible, 
and won all hearts from the queen on her throne to the 
maid in the cottage. By the side of the groom stood his 
friends and countrymen in the rich costumes of the day, 
some in armory, some in courtly apparel, and before 
him, in unpretending dignity, the Rev. W. Whitaker in 
his gown and surplice. But who are those dark and 
strange forms that have come gliding in like dismal 
shadows flitting over a sunlit landscape, even while 
the attention of all the bystanders was riveted upon the 
pale bride and her fair English friends ? They are decked 
in all the barbaric splendor of the sons of the forest, in 
gaudy paint, and covered with quaint strings of oddly 
mixed beads, and teeth and claws. After a while the 
colonists recognize in them Opahisco, a younger brother 
of Powhatan, the bride's father, with two of his sons, 
whom the great king has sent on purpose " to see the 
manner of marrying, and to do in their behalf what they 
were required to do for confirmation of it as his deputies." 
Surely, the grim old warrior must have had a delicate 
perception of what was proper and expedient on such an 
occasion, to imitate from pure instinct, and yet so closely, 
the usages of older nations and the ceremonies observed 
in other countries. 

As, however " the course of true love never did run 
smooth," we are interrupted at this moment of apparent 
happiness and bliss by the cold-blooded statement of 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 91 

William Strachey, before mentioned, that " Pocahunta, 
using to our fort in tymes passed, was married to a pri- 
vate captain, called Kokoum, some two years since." He 
even enforces his assertion by repeating it elsewhere in 
the words : " She lived as wife to another settler before 
John Rolfe." But his statement stands alone, unsupported 
by any evidence whatsoever, and is neither mentioned nor 
referred to by any other' writer. It is hardly to be pre- 
sumed that, in the multitude of notices concerning the 
great Indian princess, and her subsequent brilliant though 
short career in England, this fact alone should have 
escaped the attention of all other contemporary authors. 
Nor is it probable that the Governor's evident interest in 
John Rolfe's suit, or Captain John Smith's unfailing attach- 
ment to Pocahontas, should have ignored so remarkable 
an event. What is more likely, on the contrary, than 
that another child of the king's, perhaps the very daugh- 
ter referred to as " a young one and a great darling," 
should have before this married an Englishman ? Or, 
if that be not admissible, it may be fairly presumed that 
Kokoum was the Indian name of John Rolfe himself, 
and hence the two were one and the same person. For 
nothing was more common in those days than for those 
who wrote on Indian affairs to be hopelessly misled by 
the confusion of names. The dull, untutored ears of the 
common English settlers were little able to discern the 
delicate sounds of new and utterly strange idioms ; they 
repeated them, no doubt, to the best of their ability, but 
that ability was very feeble indeed, and the trouble will 



92 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

be fully realized by all who have ever been called upon 
to repeat the more difficult sounds of foreign languages. 
Besides, it was the constant habit of the Indians to be- 
stow their own names upon the leading men in the Eng- 
lish colonies. The Governor of Canada was to them 
always Ormontio or Onondio ; the Six Nations called 
every Governor of Maryland Tocaryhogan, the man living 
in the honorable place ; the Governor of New England and 
New York were known to them as Corlaer, after one of 
the early Dutch settlers ; and William Penn had even a 
punning name, being called Onas — the pen. The same 
custom prevailed in Virginia, where an Englishman ap- 
peared in the Powhatan dialect as Tassantasses, and 
William Strachey himself calls Pocahontas Amonate, a 
name which is not mentioned anywhere else. Even if 
he did not purposely misapprehend the matter, he may, 
therefore, very easily have been misled by this variety of 
names, and fancied that Kokoum and Rolfe were two 
different persons, as well as Pocahontas and Matoax. 

After her marriage the Indian girl made more and 
more rapid progress in all that became her new station. 
" By the diligent care of Master John Rolfe, her husband, 
and his friends, she was taught such English as might be 
well understood," and she soon put her-newly acquired 
knowledge to good purpose. " For she promptly acquir- 
ed, with a woman's ready instinct and an ardent desire to 
please her husband, the habits of European life, till her 
old friend John Smith, could write of her to his queen ; " 
she was become very civil and formal after our English 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 93 

manner." In the meantime her father had also gradu- 
ally forgiven the terrible offence, when his beloved daugh- 
ter was forcibly torn from him, and when several gentle- 
men had been sent to him at Pamaonke, one reports that 
" he offered me a pipe of tobacco and then asked me how 
his brother, Sir Thomas Dale did, and his daughter, and 
his unknown sonne, and how they lived, loved and liked ? " 
When the ice was thus broken, new efforts were made to 
bring about a perfect reconciliation, and John Rolfe him- 
self accompanied an embassy sent to Powhatan, and was 
kindly received. 

Thus, improving daily, and enjoying great happiness, 
bride and groom lived together " civilly and lovingly," 
till their friend and patron, Sir Thomas Gates, resolved 
to return to his native land, and an arrangement was made 
by which the young couple were to accompany him to 
England. Once more Captain Argall appears upon the 
scene, but this time in the friendly attitude of comman- 
der of the good ship George, in which the whole company 
embarked, and after a pleasant voyage, reached Plymouth 
on the twelfth of June, 16 16. The bride was accompan- 
ied by a few of her kinsmen, among whom one of the most 
distinguished of them all suffered very soon after landing 
a most ludicrous discomfiture. He was one of the 
chief priests of his tribe and held in very high esteem by 
Powhatan, who had sent him for the special purpose of 
ascertaining by his own observation the number of able- 
bodied men about that strange tribe, the English might be 
able to oppose to his warriors. When Uttoniatoncakkin, 



94 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

the wise medicine-man, therefore left the ship to go on 
shore, he was seen to carry a white staff in his hand, and 
whenever he met a man on the wharves or in the streets 
of busy Plymouth, he made a notch in the stick. It was, 
of course, full in a short time, and the poor Indian utterly 
bewildered ; he mentioned his mishap to his friends, who 
tried to explain the matter to him, but after his return to 
Virginia he could not help telling his master, the king, 
half reproachfully : " You sent me to number the Eng- 
lish. Count the stars in heaven — count the sand on the 
sea-shore — then you will know the number of the Eng- 
lish." 

From Plymouth the young couple proceeded to Lon- 
don, and here the Indian princess, Lady Rebecca, as she 
was officially styled, received all the attention due to her 
rank. Her modest demeanor, and her interesting, 
attractive ways secured to her the affections of every- 
body, till the wise king, who was then seated on the 
throne of England actually became jealous and expressed 
a fear that poor Mr. Rolfe might presume upon his good 
luck in having married a royal princess V Absurd as 
the apprehension was, it showed that no doubt was 
entertained as to the social claims of Pocahontas, and 
that even by the monarch's morbidly historic mind she 
was regarded as a king's worthy daughter. We are told 
that she had previously already accustomed herself to 
civility, and now carried herself as the daughter of a 
king, so thaf there was no difficulty in the way when she 
appeared at Court under the patronage of Lady de la 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 95 

War and was formally presented. Her debut was a per- 
fect success, all doors were open to her, and rank and 
fashion vied with each other in doing honor to the 
strange maiden thus suddenly transplanted from savage 
life in distant forests to the strict etiquette and artificial 
manners of an English Court. We read glowing accounts 
of her being attended by divers persons of fashion and 
distinction, "while others of great rank and qualitie 
have been very kind to her." Nor does she seem to 
have disliked the gay and brilliant life of London, for she 
appeared at the " Maskes" and other entertainments, and 
even at a great festival given with much state and pomp 
in her honor by the Bishop of London. 

The close air, the dense fogs, and the oppressive 
smoke of the great city became, however, soon intoler- 
able to one accustomed, as she was, to a life in the open 
air, and the beautiful, clear atmosphere of her native land. 
So she went down to Brentford, seven miles from Lon- 
don, the " City of Mud " of Thompson, where she lived 
for a few months in strict seclusion ; and this was perhaps 
the happiest time of her whole life. No one came in 
contact with her who did not feel irresistibly attracted by 
the sweet and yet happy manner in which this child of 
Nature adapted herself to the strange life of the Old 
World, and her noble soul unfolded one beauty after 
another, as trials came and the end approached. The 
quaint chronicler of her life tells us in simple but touch- 
ing words : " She had also by him a child, which she 
loved most dearely," but this blessing seemed to have 



§6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

filled the cup of her happiness to overflowing, for sonn 
after, in the month of March, 1617, she died at Graves- 
end, where she had hoped to embark for her native land, 
and there she was buried in the parish church. The 
building was unfortunately burned in 1727, but the par- 
ish-register was saved, and there we read the following 
entry: " 1616. March 21. Rebecca Wrothe, wyffe of 
Thos. Wrothe, gent, a Virginia Lady borne, was buried 
in the channcell." It must be borne in mind that 1616 
was then the civil year, while the historical year was 
16 1 7, and that the misspelling of the name presents no 
difficulties to those who remember that Shakespeare 
wrote his own name in a great variety of ways, that Sir 
Edward Coke's name was always spelt Cook by his own 
wife, and Sir Matthew Hale is printed as Hales in the 
Parliamentary journals. The clerk of the Vestry put 
down the name as it sounded in his ears, just as he 
would have written Chumley if he had been called upon 
to record the death of a Cholmondeley. 

Thus ended the strange short life of this remarkable 
Indian maiden, and this is literally the only tangible 
relic of the last resting-place of " the first-fruit of the 
gospel in America." 

Her husband, John Rolfe, leaving the infant in the 
hands of Sir Lewis Henktey at Plymouth, " who desired 
the care and education of him," returned to the Colony, 
where he was speedily appointed Recorder and Secretary. 
He appears repeatedly in the history of Virginia, now as 
the owner of four hundred acres, " planted in Rappa- 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 



97 



hannock City, over against James City," and then again, 
is residing about two miles from the City of Henrico, 
where the Court-house afterwards stood, and the parson- 
age and glebe of New Varina were laid out. Tradition 
has it that the lands, which were for many generations 
called Pokahuntas, and formed at a later period one of 
the four towns of which Petersburg consisted, were origi- 
nally given by Powhatan to John Rolfe as a marriage 
portion. The romance, however, does not extend beyond 
the life and the lineage of the Indian maid, for the wid- 
ower married again and had other children, in whose 
behalf an application was made to a Virginia Court in 
1622, by Henry Rolfe, brother to John Rolfe, and one of 
the adventurers who had come over two years before. 
John Rolfe himself died in 1622, unnoticed, and appar- 
ently unregretted. 

The little infant, Pocahontas' child, had, in the mean- 
time, a severe struggle for its life and future position. It 
had barely escaped a dangerous illness when misfortune 
and disgrace broke upon the house that had given him 
shelter, and threatened to involve him in one of the most 
tragic episodes of that eventful period. The distant kins- 
man, who had willingly assumed the responsible task of 
watching over the Indian king's grandchild, was a near 
connection and friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, and had, 
through his influence, and by the payment of a large sum 
of money, obtained the place of Vice-Admiral of Devon. 
To carry out his ambitious designs he earnestly coveted 
Raleigh's famous ship, which was then expected back 
7 



98 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

from Guiana, and for this purpose engaged in one of the 
vilest conspiracies on record. Raleigh had fallen in dis- 
grace, and Stukeley obtained, at his urgent request, the 
warrant for his arrest ! He next engaged his noble and 
unsuspicious friend to accompany him on a journey to 
London, and at once the confidant and the executioner 
of the great statesman, he carried him to town, all friend- 
ship and devotion to his face, all villany and foul treach- 
ery in his heart. He even encouraged his victim in a 
plan of escape, carrying a warrant of indemnity for any- 
thing he might do for that purpose in his pocket, and 
rested not till he saw Raleigh safely in the tower and 
himself in possession of his ship. But revenge came in 
a way which probably no one had expected. Sir Walter 
declared on the scaffold and in sight of heavenly judg- 
ment, that he forgave Sir Lewis Stukeley, but felt bound 
in charity to caution all men against him and such as he 
was ! The multitude mourned over Raleigh's fate and 
wept at his pathetic address, but they execrated the 
traitor, and Sir Lewis was henceforth known as Sir Judas. 
Raleigh's words had sealed his doom. He disappeared 
from society, but only to be dragged forth into broad day- 
light once more under an accusation of having clipped 
gold — the very guineas he had received from the Crown 
as the price of blood. To save himself, he first accused 
his own son ; when this was of no avail, he bought his 
discharge with his last shilling, and then wandered about, 
homeless and friendless, till in August, 1620, Camden 
tells us, " Sir Lewis Stukeley, who betrayed Sir Walter 
Raleigh, died in a manner mad." 



OUR FIRST ROMANCE. 99 

It was a happy escape for the poor Indian boy to be 
taken from the hands of such a man, though he enjoyed, 
no doubt, fewer advantages in the humble house of Henry 
Rolfe, his uncle, a modest citizen of London. When 
sufficiently strong to bear the fatigue of a long voyage, 
and after he had received a simple but sound education 
in England, he went to Virginia, settled down at Henrico, 
and became a person of fortune and some distinction in 
the colony. Every now and then he also appears in the 
early records of the Assembly and of local courts. Thus, 
in 1670, he sought and obtained leave from the General 
Assembly to visit his kinsman Opeehancanough, king of 
the Pamunkeys, and his aunt Cleopatre, his mother's 
sister. (Burk Va. II., p. 54.) Nothing is known of the 
pleasure he may have derived from this glimpse of Indian 
life ; the drawbacks must have been serious. The king was 
the same grim old warrior whom Captain John Smith had 
detected in a vile plot to take his life, whereupon he 
had seized him boldly by a lock of his long hair, and, 
clapping a pistol to his heart, had led him out trembling 
before his people, thus saving his own life and that of his 
companions. Nor does his character seem to have im- 
proved as he grew older, for in a quaint pamphlet, " A 
Perfect Description of Virginia, London, 1649," we find 
him spoken of as " the bloody monster, upon a hundred 
years old." At another time Thomas Rolfe is the recipi- 
ent of a special favor, an Act of the General Assembly, 
dated October, 1646, ordering : "That Leftenant Thomas 
Rolfe, shall have and enjoy for himselfe and his heires 
forever ffort James, alias Chickahominy Fort, with foure 



IOO ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

hundred acres adjoining the same." He had but one 

child, a daughter, who became the wife of Colonel Robert 

Boiling, and the mother of one son, Major John Boiling. 

The latter, however, left many children, " so that," says 

Stith, " this remnant of the Imperial family of Virginia, 

which long ran in a single person, is now increased and 

branched out in a very numerous progeny." 

Long before him the remarkable man had also passed 

away with whom originated the whole strange drama. 

Captain John Smith had returned to London to end there 

a life unsurpassed in romantic adventure and noble 

achievements, in " mere oblivion." A contemporary 

writer says, with more feeling than skill : 

" If France or Spaine or any forren soile 
Could claime thee theirs — for these thy paines and toils 
Th'adst got reward and honor : now a days, 
What our own natives doe, we seldom praise." 

The discoverer of New England and the founder of 
Virginia spent the closing years of his life in London un- 
rewarded and unnoticed. The last scene of all, that ends 
this strange, eventful history, " is his burial in St. Sepul- 
chres, Skinner street, and even there, in his last resting- 
place, ungrateful Fate seems to have pursued him, for the 
mural tablet that once recorded his name and his deeds, 
was destroyed in the 'great fire of London. All that re- 
minds us now of him is a large flat stone in front of the 
communion-table, on which three Turks' heads — his arms 
— are still faintly visible, and thus our earliest romance, un- 
sullied by crime and touching in its simplicity, ends, and 

" Like an insubstantial pageant faded 
Leaves not a rack behind.' 




A FEW TOWN NAMES, 
rv. 

RECENT American author, impressed 
with the solemn duty of overcoming 
the natural bashfulness of his nation, 
and of making the outside world aware 
of a few points in which America 
might not be considered inferior to the 
Old World, wound up his essay with the words : 
"Physicians agree unanimously in admitting that man 
comes more readily into this world here than in any 
other part of the earth." It had long been known 
that the gates for going out of it were carefully kept wide 
open here at all times, and that a great variety of outlets 
were provided for leaving the world. But the news was 
cheering that the entrance doors also were many, and 
ready to swing open for the happy new-comer. The con- 
clusion followed naturally, that a life so easily begun and 
so readily ended, could not well be presumed to be very 
slow in its course or very simple and solemn in its char- 
acter. This was easily proved, for the American is a 
nomad : he travels from childhood up — now singly, and 
now in numbers. Railways and rivers, highways and 



102 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

byways are incessantly thronged with a restless, surging 
crowd ; mine inn is the home of thousands, and a " resi- 
dence " in the stricter sense of the word is almost unknown. 
This system of perpetual motion naturally affects all 
around him ; his States change their shape and size in 
times of peace as well as in war ; his rivers wander hither 
and thither, and cities spring up over night, grow to a 
fair size, thrive and prosper, and as a new railway is 
opened or a new territory formed, they vanish over night 
to reappear at some distant place. Some of the oldest 
towns in the country have utterly disappeared, leaving 
no trace behind them ; others rise suddenly like mush- 
rooms and unfold their splendor in a few years, while still 
others content themselves with changing at least their name 
at short intervals, and often for no apparent reason. The 
great cities of Europe are known to us from time imme- 
morial by their present designation, and in the rare cases 
where a double name is recorded one was intended for 
the great mass of the people and the other reserved for 
the small number of the initiated. Such, it is well known, 
was the case with Rome, which had its ancient sacred 
name of Valentia. In our New World, fortunately, the 
first stages in the history of great cities are still easily 
ascertained, and as many of the details will, no doubt, 
ere long be forgotten in the vast turmoil and reckless 
rush of our national life, it may not be amiss to record 
here some of the more striking instances. 

In naming towns, as in our general nomenclature, it 
is very much to be regretted that Indian names have been 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. I03 

either altogether ignored or at least sadly abused and 
disfigured by inattention. Hence there are but few im- 
portant places in the Union which retain the original 
word in its purer form. Among these a prominent place 
is due to the one town which bears the national name of 
our mountains and rivers — Apalache. Oldmixon, not 
often reliable but generally well-informed, tells us that 
" the natives called the country Apekhey at first, from 
Norimbegua to Florida." (America I., p. 345.) The 
earliest mention made of the word occurs in an official 
report of Alonzo Enriquez, a Spanish officer who landed in 
April, 1527-8, on the coast of Florida, and was here in- 
formed by the Indians that there lay to the West a prov- 
ince called Apalache. How he could catch the sound is 
a mystery, as he tells us that this information came to 
him by signs ; but the additional reports that " a quantity 
of metal," might be found there, evidently quickened his 
perception, for he really reached a village known by that 
name somewhere near the headwaters of the Savannah 
and Alatamaha Rivers. (Rel. Cabeca de Vaca. Valla- 
dolid, 1555.) In June, 1528, another adventurer of the 
same nation, Pamfilo de Narvaez, landed once more near 
the same place and again fell in with Apalache Indians, 
and, of course, again was allured by tempting stories of 
precious gold and silver to be found in some remote 
province — the fatal will-o'-the-wisp that led noble and 
ignoble spirits for ages into like ruin and destruction. 
Very nearly at the same time the " Mountains of Appala- 
tey " are mentioned for the first time (Hakluyt III., p. 



104 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

369), and thus there can be no doubt that the name is 
both ancient and widely spread over the continent. It is 
borne now by a modest but most interesting town in 
Florida, coupled with the Indian word cola, which is said 
to mean River, although Apalachicola is explained by 
one who is generally good authority as the town of low 
cottages on the river. (Purchas I., 744.) He accounts 
for the mention of low houses by the precaution taken to 
avoid the fatal effect of continual tempests, which prevail 
in those regions, but the explanation is doubtful. 

When the unfortunate La Salle heard the sad news of 
the loss of his precious vessel, the Griffin, which he had 
built with his own hands near the Falls of Niagara, and 
which he hoped would bring him in a rich freight from 
Canada, the means of descending the great river of the 
West, his courage failed him and his heart was breaking. 
With the aid of a few faithful friends he built a little fort, 
surrounded by inaccessible swamps, which he called 
Crevecoeur, and then set out to explore the country of 
the Illinois and to establish relations with the other great 
tribes. In the land of the Mascontins — the Wisconsins 
of later days — he struck a river which he heard called 
Chekagon, and on its banks he found a village upon 
which he promptly bestowed that name. When on a 
later day, in the full flush of brilliant success, he took 
possession of the new country of Louisiana in the name 
of his sovereign, the King of France and Navarre, he for 
the first time wrote c'own in his prods verbal the name, 
of Chekagon, laying his claims " from the mouth of the 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 105 

Mississippi to the waters of the Chekagon." (April 9 
1682.) Father Membre tells us that the word meant 
Divine River, but in no Algonquin dialect can such an 
explanation be found. The name appears slightly modi- 
fied in Jontel's Journal : " We arrived at Chicagou on the 
29th of March, 1688," and here meant, not a river, but a 
fort, built, in all probability, on the very site of the great 
city of Chicago, rising just now phcenix-like from the 
ashes. 

The town of Chillicothe, in the State of Ohio, is per- 
haps the only city in the United States which was once a 
considerable town of the Indians. Here the powerful 
nation of Shawnees, the Chats Sauvages or Wild Cats of 
the French, had so large a village that Daniel Boone 
when brought as a captive to the place in 1778, saw a 
review of four hundred and fifty fully armed warriors, 
who were setting out for a forage upon the settlements of 
the whites. The question of the identity of this village 
with the present town, which bears that name, is, how- 
ever, somewhat complicated by the fact that there were 
in those clays at least three Chillicothes in. existence. 
One spread its countless lodges over the beautiful 
Pickawa Plains, not far from the lovely site of the present 
city, and was famous as the place from which Logan sent 
his remarkable speech to Lord Dunmore, and is the same 
of which Boone gave so graphic an account. Another 
Chillicothe was on the Maumee, and a third on the Little 
Miami. 

A town, small in size, but remarkable for its large 



106 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

trade, bears the name of an extinct tribe of Indians, who 
seem to have been doubly unfortunate, as their own race 
was utterly destroyed, and even their ancient name sur- 
vives only in a fragment. " Westward from Massachusetts 
Bay is situated a very spacious lake, called by the natives 
the Lake of Erocoise, which is far more excellent than the 
Lake of Genezareth in the country of Palestina," says 
Thomas Morton in his New England Canaan, printed in 
1632. The name, although evidently intended for the 
French Iroquois, is here used to designate Lake Erie, of 
which Father Hennepin speaks as " Lake Erike, that is 
to say, the Lake of the Cat, as the Hurons call it." 
(Nouv. Decouv., p. 77.) From this the transition is easy 
to " The Nation of the Eriez or the Cats," in Charlevoix, 
(Nouv. France I., p. 322,) and the name of Erie, given to 
the town and the great lake alike, is nowadays all that 
reminds us of the existence of a large and powerful na- 
tion, who were utterly destroyed by the Iroquois as early 
as the year 1654. 

The town of Milwaukee awakens in the minds of those 
who take an interest in our early history the memory of 
two of those noble messengers of Christ who, though be- 
longing to a hostile church, bore hearts as pure, as true 
and loving as any that ever beat under Puritan gown. 
They had left, like so many of their unselfish brethren, the 
pleasures and delights of fair France behind them, to 
plunge into the wilderness and to save the poor Indians. 
In the course of their wanderings westward, these two 
brave men, Allouez and Dablon, carrying no weapon but 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 107 

the cross, and having neither silver nor scrip for theii 
journey, reached, at last, a dismal part of the land of the 
Miami's. They were nearly starved, but undaunted and 
undismayed, they preached day after day, till they came 
to a place which they heard the Indians call Mellioki, 
and which became a bright spot in their memories. They 
had a meal here ! " A little Indian corn, grinded small 
with little frogs gathered in a meadow." The opulent 
town of Milwaukee can fortunately receive missionaries 
more hospitably now, and reward them for the zeal and 
the privations of their predecessors. 

In the heart of the State of New York, and in one of 
its fairest regions, there stands a small grove of venerable 
trees, hoary in their drapery of gray moss and strangely 
contrasting in their weird sadness with the smiling plain 
around them and the small busy town, the incessant hum 
of which is heard at a little distance. This is the spot 
where, in former days, powerful Indian nations met in 
solemn assembly and often formed plans which startled 
the hardy settler under the pines of Penobscot, struck 
alarm in the hearts of brave men to the far-off Mississip- 
pi, and even shook the mountain fastnesses of the distant 
Cherokees. Here the far-famed Six Nations kept their 
great council-fire burning forever ; here they assembled 
upon great and weighty occasions, and here the weal and 
woe of thousands were decided. The watch over the 
place and the care for the fire was entrusted to the 
Oneidas, who called themselves Onistaang, the people of 
the stone, from a sacred stone which followed them spon- 



108 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

taneously and mysteriously wherever they went. Gen- 
eration after generation passed away, and still they offered 
their yearly sacrifices on the magic altar, till their num- 
bers had become too small for the sacred trust. Then, 
in our own day, Governor Seymour had the stone carried 
in solemn procession to the town of Utica (!), and there 
it was deposited in the beautiful cemetery, amid the low 
chants and grievous plaints of surviving Oneidas and 
Onondagas. 

The town of Peoria recalls to us the often -forgotten 
fact that the Indians had their traditions, their pride of 
ancestry, and their long-cherished distinctions in quite 
as marked a manner as other nations. As they called 
the Delawares grandfathers, the Wyandots uBcles, and 
the Mohicans elder brothers in acknowledgment of their 
varying antiquity, they bestowed similar names upon other 
tribes. Thus they spoke of the Florida Indians as of 
Seminoles or Runaways, because they were not an origi- 
nal tribe, but simply stray wanderers from other tribes, 
like the Upper Creeks and the Muscogees. Thus also, 
the name of Peouaria was given to a western tribe, from 
a word piroue, which means strange. For they lived a 
foreign community in the midst of the very sons of the 
soil, the Lenne-Lenape, who were exceedingly proud of 
being the " men of all men," as their name signifies. 
This modest village of Indians, speaking a strange lan- 
guage, and hence so contemptuously called Foreigners, 
has since grown up into the beautiful city of Peoria on 
the lake of the same name. 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. IO9 

Even more touchingly is the memory of early Indina 
life connected with the little town of Natick in Massa- 
chusetts ; for the place owes its very existence and 
present form to the natives. Oldmixon tells us that 
" the Praying Indians combined together in a body and 
built a town by Charles River, in the midst of Massachu- 
setts, to which they gave the name of Natick. It consists 
of three long streets, two on one side of the river and one 
on the other, with house-lots for every family." They 
formed here a church of their own, after the Presbyterian 
manner, and were prosperous and happy in 1660. It 
was here, also, that the great Apostle of the Indians had 
his famous " chamber in the wall," and the house is still 
shown to curious travellers, in an upper room of which a 
corner was partitioned off for the table and the bedstead 
of the pious Eliot, and where he wrote a large part of his 
immortal work. 

The name of the forlorn town of Nantucket also is of 
Indian origin, Nantukes having been the primitive form, 
although it is occasionally traced back to a different source. 
When the different parts of the colony were distributed 
among the early settlers, the sandy-sterile island tempted 
no one ; hence it was called Nan-tuck it, if we believe 
the mariners, who tell the story to the marines. The 
town has had more than its usual share of vicissitudes. 
At one time it was ceded to New York and straightway 
christened Sherburne : when it reverted to the parent 
colony it resumed its ancient name. Then it was almost 
entirely destroyed by fire, and in our own day it is nearly 



IIO ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

deserted, as the fisheries, which formerly supported and 
even enriched the inhabitants, have long ceased to be 
profitable. Fortunately it has quite a number of descend- 
ants, thanks to the fact that her bold, indefatigable sailors 
are well-known in nearly every part of the globe. Thus 
San Francisco has its suburb near the port called New 
Nantucket, and a faraway island in the Pacific even bears 
the name of Nantucket, the sponsors in all these cases 
coming from the original town " Down East." 

It was probably one of the proudest days in the great 
De Soto's life when he approached, on the 18th Octo- 
ber, 1570, the large Indian city, of which such wonders 
had been foretold, and where his excited imagination 
already saw all the treasures of a vast kingdom placed 
at his disposal. He was riding in the haughty conscious- 
ness of his power, at the head of the largest force of 
European soldiers which our part of the New World had 
yet seen, and by his side the gigantic Black Warrior, Tus- 
caloosa, the noble chief of the people whose capital he 
was approaching. A vast crowd of men and women cov- 
ered the beautiful plain as far as eye could see, and the 
heights overhanging the Alabama River also were thronged 
with a wondering multitude. The great explorer felt his 
heart swell with delight as the large, well-built town, with 
its countless houses and stately temples, fell upon his eye ; 
he did not heed, in his triumph, the dark clouds that 
hung on every countenance and the fierce, defiant fire 
that flashed from the eyes of the warriors. Alas ! before 
he could renew his mournful march to the Mississippi, the 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. Ill 

whole of that magnificent town was to be laid in ashes, 
more than half of his faithful followers were to be buried 
on its site, and over six thousand Indian warriors were to 
fall in defence of their country. For Maubila, as he 
heard the town called, was one of the few large, fortified 
cities of which we have any record in the annals of Indian 
history, and the Maubilians the bravest people ever en- 
countered by the Spaniards. They were conquered by 
De Soto, thanks to his horses, his firearms and the in- 
domitable courage of his brave men ; but he paid dearly 
for the victory, and when he left the ill-fated spot, he had 
lost the flower of his army, the whole of his personal 
property, ammunition and armor included ; and, most 
grievous loss of all, the bouyant hopes and haughty con- 
fidence that had kept his courage up amid so many trials 
and vexatious delays. From that day the name of 
Mavilla, as the Spaniards preferred to write it, became a 
household word with all the adventurers who thronged 
our harbors and garrisoned our forts, but it was trans- 
ferred from the old Indian town on what is now called 
Choctaw Bluff, to the mouth of the river Maubile, as the 
name appears in the reports of early French settlers. 
Marigny de Mandiville, a brave Protestant soldier, here 
built in June, 1722, a strong fort, which he named after 
the great Conde — the cornerstone, with the date of the 
first attempt made in 17 17, having been found by our own 
troops some years after the fort, rechristened by the 
British as Fort Charlotte, had been taken from the latter. 
How little stability there was for generations in these 



112 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Indian names of our towns, may be seen from the fact 
that James Glen, from 1739 to 1755, the able Governor 
of South Carolina, in his report to the Duke of Argyll, 
speaks of a " River Moville, falling into the Bay of Mex- 
ico." 

Another southern town began its existence where other 
places generally end it — in ruins. This is the city of 
Yazoo, the first settlers of which thoughtlessly adopted 
for their new home the name which they had heard ap- 
plied to the place by the surrounding Indians, the Choc- 
taws and Chickasaws. They were not aware that the 
vast number of mounds and ruined fortifications which 
are strewn along the course of the Yazoo River, and in 
which those tribes beheld the last traces of the works 
of the former owners of the soil, had led them to bestow 
upon the stream and the whole district the name of 
Yazoo — the Ruins. A still stranger mistake was made 
by Major James T. Savage, the discoverer of the far- 
famed Yosemite Valley, on Merced River, on the western 
slope of the Sierra Nevada. Pursuing, with a mere hand- 
ful of men, a band of predatory Indians, he came sud- 
denly in sight of the magnificent spectacle, which has 
not its equal upon earth, and having just learned the 
word Yosemite, which he then thought to be the Indian 
name of the Grizzly Bear, the emblem of California and 
the most remarkable inhabitant of those regions, he very 
naturally gave that name to the Valley. One of the most 
striking features of this world of wonders, fortunately, 
bears a more appropriate name. This is the Sequoia 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 113 

gigantea, the colossal pine tree, which, now singly and 
now in groups, adorns the great valley ; it is so named 
in honor of Sequoia, the famous Cherokee Indian who 
invented, by his genius, an alphabet for his tribe, and 
enjoys the unique honor of conferring an Indian's name 
upon a recent discovery in science. 

In spite of all the violent changes to which these 
Indian names of towns have been subjected, and in spite 
of the frequent blunders of which they remain permanent 
witnesses, they seem to be far preferable to the majority 
of English names, which were either transferred from 
other uses to towns or specially made for the purpose. 
The subject of our town-names of this class is an inex- 
haustible source of ridicule and cheap wit for foreign 
critics, and yet even the genius of a Dickens did not suc- 
ceed in coining a new name for his type of a Western 
city, but had to content itself with copying from the West- 
over MSS. the happy name of Eden. That is, of course, 
no reason why the proud American should boastfully 
have twenty-four Edens in the Union, besides six earthly 
New Jerusalems. He does not much believe in ancient 
myths, and hence contradicting the poet's assertion that, 
Ilium fuit, he has sixteen Troys. The subject of classic 
names, however, is a peculiarly painful one, thanks to 
the preference given to this class by one of the early Sur- 
veyor-Generals of the State of New York, De Witt, who 
is responsible for the Uticas and Ithacas, the Homers and 
Virgils, the Romes and Athens, which abound in the 
Empire State, and from thence spread all over the Union. 
8 



I 14 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Why Demosthenes should be alone forgotten of all- the 
great classic authors, is hard to tell ; but even Shakes- 
peare is badly treated ; he has but one town named 
after him in Arkansas, and the two cities of Romeo and 
Juliet are but a sorry consolation. There is no objection 
to be made to well-meaning settlers who determine to 
identify their new homes with Enterprise or Energy, with 
Friendship or Harmony, Energy or Equality ; but why 
they should ever choose Embarrassment is wholly unin- 
telligible. Nor is it easy to understand the taste of the 
nine communities who chose to recognize and honor 
Cain by assuming his name, while not one has done the 
same honor to Abel. 

The mere absurdity of names being thus promiscu- 
ously and arbitrarily bestowed upon towns and cities is 
bad enough. No traveller in the State of New York can 
well repress a feeling of impatience, when, after leaving 
Carthage in the morning, he is made to dine at Leyden, 
and sups, if so inclined, at Denmark, or if he should 
choose another route, reaches Russia by noon and Nor- 
way before night. Nothing but darkest ignorance or 
grossest indifference can excuse such a proceeding, al- 
though indolence has gone even farther and bodily trans- 
ferred a whole county from the State of New York to 
that of Wisconsin, every name of town, village and ham- 
let, being faithfully reproduced. But it is not easy to 
imagine that this is all of the evil. It cannot be but 
that some influence is exercised by the name of a place 
over its inhabitants. It need not be the somewhat pain- 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 15 

ful effect which Piousville has on its citizens, who are 
open to the suspicion of being pious villains ; but how 
can the man who lives in Dirttown(Ga.), Rob town (Va.), 
Gin-Henry (Mo.), or Smallpox (111.), preserve his self- 
respect through life ? Can a man confess that he lives 
at Longacoming, Fuddletown or Bugaboo, and expect to 
be looked upon like any other respectable gentleman? 
Kickaboo, Wegee or Maxinkuckee would seem to be in- 
finitely preferable names, though startling enough at first 
sight. There is a class of men among us who can per- 
haps best afford to connect themselves with such names : 
it is those who themselves enjoy peculiar designations, 
like Mr. Undone Boots, of Albany, and Mr. Unfledged 
Hawk, of New York, to say nothing of men of historic 
renown, like Mr. Preserved Fish. With such an endless 
variety of names at our disposal, and enjoying, besides, 
according to a most learned opinion delivered in the courts 
of New York, the unlimited right of " assuming a name at 
will," it is a wonder that so few new forms appear in our 
geographies and directories. When new territories are to 
be named and new towns to be christened, nothing but 
repetition is thought of, and hence the multitude of coun- 
ties and post-towns which have the same designation. 
The same poverty of invention appears in christening 
children, and apparently the fatality extends even to the 
increased facility of changing names by means of divorce. 
Quite recently a case in point appeared in the Court of 
Indianapolis. An enterprising woman, desirous of mak- 
ing a new experiment in matrimony, complained that she 



Il6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

had been married five times already, without ever suc- 
ceeding in obtaining a new " start." Born a Smith, she 
had first married a Smith, then a German Schmidt, next 
an English Smythe, after him a Smithe, and now she ap- 
peared on record as Mrs. Smythe once more. The judge 
was inexorable, and she may have to end as she began — 
a Smith forever. A Western town had a still more griev- 
ous trial to undergo. The first settlers had called the 
place Grasshopper Falls, a name which the good town 
considered unpleasantly suggestive of a peculiarity of 
Kansas, and therefore applied in 1863 to the Legislature 
for leave to change. A wag had suggested Sauterelle, 
the French name of the destructive insect, and Sauterelle 
the lawgivers decreed it should be hereafter. The com- 
mon people, however, unable to repeat the foreign sound, 
in a little while transformed it into Sowtail, and so great 
was the distress of certain inhabitants of the place at re- 
ceiving letters addressed to them at Sowtail, that they 
penitently returned to the Grasshopper of their early days. 
This tendency to corrupt or Anglicise French names 
is a fertile source of odd and apparently inexplicable 
names in our country. Wherever the French first settled 
and gave names to local features, the same ludicrous pro- 
cess of utter transformation has taken place ; mountains, 
rivers and towns, have all fared alike. The Bay of Fundy 
has a marked feature in a tall mountain, which is almost 
constantly overhung with huge masses of cloud, and was, 
hence, called by the early missionaries Chapeau Dieu 
(God's Hat) ; it is now Shepody Mountain. At the other 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 117 

end of the Northern Continent lies the Bay, once known 
as Anse des Cousins (Mosquito Bay) ; sailors and settlers 
alike now speak of it only as Nancy Cousin's Bay. A 
beautiful river in St. Lawrence County, New York, flow- 
ing through fertile lands and enriching the soil by periodi- 
cal overflows, was called La Grasse Riviere (the Fertile 
River), by the French Canadians, who lived at the mouth, 
near the head of St. Regis Island. Falling into English 
hands it was promptly naturalized as Grass River. A 
sadder fate was that of the low, dismal stream on which 
the town of Galena is situated. When first discovered in 
1700 by Le Seuer, it obtained the name of La Riviere des 
Feves (Bean River), from the immense masses of wild 
beans which were found growing on its banks. The 
beans disappeared when the country was settled, and with 
them the meaning of the name ; but as the river had in 
the meantime established an unenviable notoriety for 
" fever and ague," it was naturally transformed into La 
Riviere de la Fievre (Fever River), and such it remained 
till in the year 1854 the Legislature of Illinois, by a spe- 
cial Act, ordered it to be called Galena River. That 
State, early explored by French missionaries and rich in 
French names, abounds hence also in curious corruptions 
of this kind. Thus the Marais d'Ogee has become Mere- 
dosia ; an ill-reputed creek, known as Mauvaise Terre, is 
now Movistar Creek ; an out-of-the-way passage, Chenal 
Ecarte, rejoices in the euphonious name of Snicarty ; Au- 
kas is now Okau, and Bon Pas Prairie has degenerated 
into Bonvpare, and will probably end, like Bon Pere, in a 



Il8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

vulgar Bumper. The farther West we go the more strik- 
ing become these corruptions. A cape on the Upper 
Mississippi, called by the early French voyagers Cap a 
Tail, Garlic Cape, is now known as Capolite ; Lewis and 
Clark found two rivers Thieraton already in their day 
changed into Charaton ; la Riviere qui court, had become 
Quicurre River ; and a branch of the Red River of Lake 
Winnipeg, originally called Riviere Cheyenne, " from the 
Cheyenne Indians living on its borders," had gradually 
changed into Riviere Chien, and was then translated into 
Dog River ! Towns which received their names in course 
of a regular process seem to have been by no means more 
fortunate, thanks to unfortunate accidents or the very 
pardonable ignorance of first settlers. Such was the fate 
of a Connecticut town, which was once a simple farm- 
stead, owned by a plain man of strong religious feelings. 
His zeal steadily outran his knowledge, and his Scripture 
quotations were frequent but not always correct. At a 
town-meeting he referred to the words of the prophet 
Isaiah: "Who is this that cometh from Eden, with dyed 
garments from Bozrah ? " and took it into his head that 
Bozrah was a prophet. He was laughed at, and conse- 
quently became prouder than ever of the many sayings of 
the Prophet Bozrah. Soon he himself was known by no 
other name, his homestead was called so, and when in 
later years it grew up into a considerable town, it still 
remained Bozrah. The same State once deprived a town 
by a clerical blunder of its beautiful name. An Indian 
village, called Hammonasset, was settled in 1665 by 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. II9 

whites, and in remembrance of their distant home named 
Kenilworth. When, however, the Assembly of Connecti- 
cut, in 1705, issued a regular patent for its incorporation, 
the copying clerk wrote it Killingworth, and such it has 
continued to this day. 

The Queen City escaped only by chance a similar 
grievous fate. Among the first settlers on the beautiful 
river there were a few shrewd men who had carefully 
noted the fact that the treacherous stream, in all its fre- 
quent and violent overflowings, never rose to the height 
of certain bluffs, which were seen nearly opposite the 
mouth of a small stream, Licking River. Under the lead- 
ership of an old schoolmaster, John Filson, they clubbed 
their scanty means together and bought these highlands ; 
then a meeting was held to christen the new purchase. 
After much wrangling the knotty question was referred to 
the learned man among them, and he made good use of 
the occasion to air his learning. After considerable study 
and meditation he produced the beautiful name of Losan- 
tiville, which was accepted by acclamation ; it sounded so 
grand, and when he deigned to explain it, the meaning 
was so very clear and striking ! Was not L a reminder 
of L, the first letter of Licking River, and did not os mean 
in Latin, mouth ? So here was the mouth of Licking 
River. And did not anti mean over against, while ville, 
everybody knew, was the genteel name for a town. Here 
was the whole geography of the new city in a nutshell ! 
The people around, in their envy, no doubt, dubbed it 
Mosaic Town ; and jealous writers point out, with a sly 



120 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

hint at poetical justice, that the unlucky schoolmaster was, 
a short month afterwards, murdered on the Miami River 
by a single Indian. It is well known how, by the good 
taste of General St. Clair, then Governor of the Territory, 
the city was rescued from that hideous name, to be called 
" Cincinnata, in honor of the order of the Cincinnati, and 
to denote the chief place of their residence." 

The cases in which town names serve to recall the 
great names of our early history are unfortunately but few 
in number. One of the most remarkable of this class is 
probably the town of Duluth, which has not only sud- 
denly sprung into existence, but, as by the touch of a magic 
wand, acquired an importance great enough to make its 
name instantly known all over the country. The off- 
spring of yesterday, it nevertheless carries us back to the 
year 1680, when, we are told by Father Hennepin, "the 
Sieur du Luth was arrived there from Canada " (Nouv. 
Decouv. p 245). That energetic soldier, a man of great 
talent and indefatigable zeal for the missions among the 
Indians, had been promoted from a simple captain of 
marines to the command of the outlying posts, which at a 
later period dotted the whole long line of communication 
from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. In the 
last year of Frontenac's administration, Du Luth was sent 
to the far West to open new sources of traffic among 
the numerous Indian tribes on Lake Superior, and in 
1728 built the fort, which bore his name. By the side of 
such appropriate designations it appears a matter of all 
the greater regret to find the natural suggestions wilfully 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 121 

neglected, and old names applied to new and insignificant 
places. Thus there is in the heart of the State of New 
York a spot apparently marked out by nature and by his- 
tory alike to become a memorial of the days of the In- 
dians. A vast mound rises from a smiling plain, and 
overhangs, as usually, the banks of a beautiful stream ; 
the enormous earth ramparts, which formerly surrounded it, 
are still distinctly traceable, although now overgrown with 
noble forest trees, and all speaks eloquently of the great 
centre of Indian life, that once, no doubt, was dear to 
many a proud tribe. On the summit of the hill there 
rises in mournful loneliness a single obelisk, with the 
plaintive words rudely carved on its western side : " Who 
is there to mourn for Logan ? " recalling forcibly the touch- 
ing words of the bereaved warrior. The whites had slain 
every kinsman of their old ally and friend, so that he 
could justly say : There runs not a drop of my blood in 
the veins of any living creature ! But Indian mounds 
and Indian bravery all were set aside in favor of a 
weakly sentimentality, which preferred the poet's fiction 
and called the city Auburn. Inattractive as the name of 
Circleville is, we prefer it as suggestive of a remarkable 
memorial of early Indian life. The town, lying twenty-six 
miles south of Columbus, in the State of Ohio, is built within 
a vast circumvallation, raised in most ancient times by the 
Indians on the banks of the Scioto. The site is an accu- 
rate circle, encompassing nearly forty-four acres, and by 
its side rises an equally accurate square, containing the 
same amount of land, and although both circle and square 



122 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

have been surveyed by well-trained engineers, no error 
has yet been detected ! 

Very different memories are recalled by the name of 
another town on the Belle Riviere of the French, in the 
same State — Gallipolis. In the year 1788 Joel Barlow, 
well known as one of the earliest American poets and a 
diplomatist of no small notoriety, was authorized to go to 
Europe for the purpose of encouraging and directing im- 
migration to this country. He filled France with stirring 
appeals and flaming advertisements ; the lands of Ohio 
were praised as a very paradise upon earth, which pro- 
duced wheat and maize without labor, while the trees of 
the forest gave sugar, and the shrubs all around furnished 
candles. The poor down-trodden French hailed eagerly 
the news of this promised land, where taxes were un- 
known, bread was abundant, and the climate the same as 
their own. Soon five hundred emigrants sailed for the 
Eldorado ; but they had hardly landed on our shores 
when their troubles commenced. They were unprepared 
for the long journey from the seaports to the banks of the 
Scioto, and when, after infinite delays and much cruel suf- 
fering, they were at last enabled to behold the land 
" where milk and honey flowed, " the disappointment was 
grievous. The fertile fields were covered with dense for- 
ests, that had to be cleared before any crop could be raised ; 
the maple trees refused to yield sugar save in mid-winter, 
and the myrtle-bushes, that were to produce wax, were 
few in number and difficult of access. Then came the 
same trouble which so frequently endangered the exist- 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 23 

ence of Virginia in her earliest days : the abundance of 
gentlemen and cunning artisans among the emigrants, 
and the absence of useful men, inured to hard work and 
familiar with husbandry. Artists, peruke makers and 
skilled laborers abounded, but although there is on record 
a well-authenticated story of a French dancing-master, who 
accumulated a fortune by teaching a Southern Indian 
tribe, the Creeks, the graces of minuets and contre-dan- 
ces, the natives of Ohio were not equally appreciative. A 
still greater misfortune occurred and filled the measure 
of their misery : the Scioto Company, under whose aus- 
pices they had come out, failed to pay for the lands, 
which reverted to the United States Government, and 
thus the poor helpless new-comers were left to shift for 
themselves, unable to converse with their neighbors, 
without money and without experience. It is hard to 
understand how they could summon courage, under such 
distressing circumstances, to mark out the boundaries of 
their new settlement, which was by the Company dubbed 
in their honor Gallispolis, a horrible compound and a 
wretched substitute for the simpler Frenchtown of other 
States. It was here that Volney saw them in 1796, and 
was filled with compassion for their miserable fate. Gov- 
ernment had the year before " donated " to the poor refu- 
gees 20,000 acres of good land at Sandy Creek, which, 
with an additional grant of 1,200 acres, made a few years 
later, gave the name of French Grant to that region. 
But the defeat of General St. Clair on the Miamis, in 179 1, 
had laid the country open to Indian assaults, and here 



124 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

were the unlucky Frenchmen living in huts and caves, 
suffering from miasmas, frost and snow, and decimated 
by the tomahawk of the red men. Many a sad year 
passed away, and hundreds of the poor immigrants were 
buried by the river-side, before the town recovered from 
its early trials and rose to become what it now is, one of 
the most nourishing cities of a great State. 

There are, of course, Salems innumerable in the 
Union ; from the first permanent town in Massachusetts, 
so called on 24th June, 1629, to the last "city" in Utah, for 
Puritans and Moravians, Catholics and Protestants, all 
united in their veneration of the blissful name of Peace, 
and loved to bestow it upon the safe harbors in which 
they hoped to find the repose denied them in the old 
country. But there is only one Jerusalem in this country 
which claims to be like David's town, the birth-place of a 
new faith. This is a small town in the State of New 
York, lying in the midst of wild and romantic scenery, 
although surrounded, in former days, by a belt of desert 
and wilderness. A fair Quakeress — whether purposely 
deceiving others or self-deceived, who can tell ? — came to 
this remote and almost unknown spot in the early part of 
this century and chose it as the home of her friends and 
followers, who called themselves The Universal Friends. 
By her matchless beauty, her native shrewdness and truly 
amazing tact, she succeeded in gathering around her a 
number of wealthy, well-meaning adherents, who built 
themselves humble log cabins, while they housed their 
idol in a magnificent mansion. Here she lived and ruled 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 125 

for years, claiming that since the day of her miraculous 
recovery from a dangerous illness, the power and spirit 
of Christ dwelt in her and enabled her to do wonders on 
earth and to secure to her faithful followers an entrance 
into heaven. She is said to have been the first inventor 
of the costume that became afterward known as the 
Bloomer, and to have enforced its use, together with 
celibacy and temperance. Nor did the charm which she 
had woven around the hearts of her devoted followers 
cease with her death, in 1829; another crafty woman, Ra- 
chel Malon, took up the deception, and maintained the 
new faith and the quaint worship for some time after- 
wards. Then the frail structure broke down and the 
town fell back into the number of unmeaning and un- 
known Jerusalems, of which there are but too many in this 
country. 

A far more pleasing sound is the name of Providence, 
which Oldmixon curiously enough prefers calling Pru- 
dence. (America I, p. 65). We all know how obstinate 
but conscientious Roger Williams was led, by the sugges- 
tions of Governor Winthrop, to leave Massachusetts Col- 
ony and seek a new home beyond her oppressive jurisdic- 
tion ; how he crossed on a bitter cold January day, 1636, 
with only five companions, the river Seekonk, and landed 
near a spring at the first inhabited nook of the future 
State of Rhode Island. He purchased, before he broke 
ground, the land from the now extinct tribe of Narragan- 
sett Indians, and in 1674, in commemoration of God's 
providence to him in his distress, he called the place 



126 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Providence, and thus laid the foundations of a new com- 
monwealth, destined to become one of the brightest stars 
in the galaxy of the Union. His boundless charity led 
him to receive with open arms whosoever came, for he 
said : " I desire it might be for a shelter for persons dis- 
tressed for conscience. " He had of course to pay the 
penalty incurred everywhere and in all ages by such un- 
limited toleration, and his beloved town fared badly, for a 
time, in public estimation. The Rev. Cotton Mather did 
not hesitate to call the first settlers a generation of Liber- 
tines, Familists, Antinomians, whose posterity, for want of 
schools of learning and a public ministry, are become so 
barbarous as not to be capable of speaking either good 
English or good sense" (Oldmixon, America, p. 204). 
W. C. Bryant has in one of his poems revived the name 
of Rogue's Island, which Connecticut malice, long ago, 
applica to parts of the new State, " because their neigh- 
bours on the East were so peculiar. " The good people 
who followed Roger Williams were, however, made of too 
stern stuff to mind such slanders, and already, in 1642, a 
body of Puritans, driven out from New England on ac- 
count of their " peculiar " views, went to Virginia and 
built near the present site of Annapolis, in Maryland, a 
New-Providence, for which they secured from the Legis- 
lature a special Act (April 9, 1649), securing to them 
perfect liberty of conscience. 

Nor is this the only example of a town name going on 
its travels and reappearing in various parts of the Union. 
Dorchester, for instance, might be called a migratory 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 27 

town, without doing it injustice. The ancestor is, of 
course, old Dorchester in England, dating back from the 
days of the Romans ; from thence the Rev. John White 
sent out, in 1630, a colony of independent churchmen, who 
founded a new Dorchester on a neck of land at Mattapan, 
in Massachusetts. Although the colony throve and pros- 
pered, discontent soon broke out among the settlers, and 
a considerable number formed themselves into an inde- 
pendent church, with their minister and deacons, for the 
purpose of moving in a body to South Carolina. They 
declared it to be their duty " to encourage the settlement 
of churches and the promotion of religion in the Southern 
plantations " — a tender regard for the consciences of oth- 
ers which has not become extinct since those days. Thus 
there arose a third Dorchester, in the South, where, on 
the 2d February, 1696, the Lord's Supper was for the 
first time administered, and the settlement nobly inaugu- 
rated. The town — on a branch of Ashleigh River — pros- 
pered handsomely and soon became quite famous by hav- 
ing within its precincts the first free school ever known in 
the province, which was formally established, in 1724, by 
a special Act of Assembly. The tract of land, however, 
which they had purchased, proved too small, and could 
not be extended, as it was surrounded by fever-breeding 
marshes. The entire population, the town of Dorchester 
in fact, went forth, therefore, to Georgia, where they ob- 
tained from the Governor of the Colony an ample grant 
of land to the south of the Oguebee River, at a place 
called Midway. Here, still another Dorchester was 



128 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

founded, and to good purpose, for the colonists seem not 
only to have maintained their character, but bequeathed 
it unblemished and undiminished to their children. A 
succession of excellent and truly pious ministers preserved 
their religious principles with remarkable fidelity for many 
generations, while their independent spirit appears to have 
grown even stronger in adversity. For these good peo- 
ple of Dorchester actually sent delegates of their own to 
the Continental Congress long before the Colony of Geor- 
gia had taken measures to promote the common cause, 
and it was in grateful acknowledgment of this zeal that 
St. John's County, in which they lived, was subsequently 
by special legislative action re-christened Liberty County. 
There is a curious contrast between the martial sound 
of the old Indian name, Musketieook, or Musketaquick, 
which once belonged to an ancient town of Massachusetts, 
and its more recent name of Concord. The former has, 
of course, nothing to do with murderous muskets, but sim- 
ply means Dead Stream, in allusion to the sluggish nature 
of the river, that was so called, and Concord bears its 
sweet name, not inappropriately, in memory of the peace- 
ful and righteous measures by which the first settlers, in 
1635, obtained the consent of the aborigines to colonise on 
their land. Norwalk, in Connecticut, shows on the con- 
trary the absurd manner in which our early towns were 
occasionally named. Here also the lands were legiti- 
mately acquired from the Indians by purchase, in 1641, 
but so far from perpetuating the memory of an important 
transaction in the name of the new settlement, they only 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 29 

thought of recalling the irrelevant fact that it was " one 
day's walk North into the country " ! How much more 
touching is the manner in which Paris, in New York, re- 
ceived its peculiar name ! It lies in a part of the State 
which is already rich in unfortunate cities, bearing the 
names of all the great towns of the Old World, and Paris, 
therefore, is also constantly suspected of being but one of 
the numerous brood of Londons and Romes, Syracuses 
and Smyrnas. It owes its name, however, to a very dif- 
ferent source. In the year 1789 a great scarcity prevailed 
in that whole district, and here and there starvation was 
actually impending. The small settlement in Oneida 
County, only a few months old, suffered especially, and 
all hearts were heavy and sad. But help was at hand ; a 
well-to-do miller and merchant at Fort Plain, on the Mo- 
hawk, heard of the distress, and immediately dispatched 
whole wagon-loads of " Virginia Corn, " which he distribu- 
ted among the sufferers, requiring no payment, but giving 
them ample credit. By his liberality they were saved 
from imminent danger, and as an expression of their 
gratitude, petitioned the Legislature soon after to bestow 
the name of their benefactor, Isaac Paris, upon the town, 
which owed to him its existence. 

Towns which received their names in honor of some 
reigning monarch, some powerful nobleman, or illustrious 
commoner in Europe, are, of course, very numerous 
throughout the country, and represent every class of 
society, from the sovereign on his throne to the dema- 
gogue who sent him to exile. Nor are English sponsors 
9 



130 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

alone responsible for our town names. There is Marietta, 
on the beautiful river called by the Indians the Elk Eye, 
but known to us as Muskingum, which marked by its 
foundation the first day of the existence of the State of 
Ohio. A small number of persons from New England 
had bought of the Ohio Land Company a superb tract of 
rich bottom lands on the river, and on the 2d of July, 
1788, met there in solemn assembly to name their future 
city. A greater confusion of names was probably never 
seen united within so small a place. The town they 
agreed to call Marietta, in honor of poor Marie Antoi- 
nette, whose fate just then excited universal sympathy in 
all feeling hearts ; the first chosen officer of the new com- 
munity was Mr. Return Jonathan Meigs ; the square on 
which a blockhouse was erected for protection against the 
Indians had the name of Campus Martius conferred upon 
it, and the great road through the covered way was mod- 
estly called Sacra Via. Far off, near the sea-coast, another 
town had long ago been built to perpetuate the memory 
of a queen, whose end was less tragic, perhaps, but by no 
means less melancholy. Here, in a long-forgotten colony, 
loyal Swedes had raised a fort which they called, " after 
the little jasmine bud in the royal conservatory," Fort 
Christina, for the martyr-king's infant daughter was then 
seated upon the throne of Sweden. It is not a little curious 
that as her prestige waned and she gradually lost one 
noble quality after another, till at last she forsook 'even 
her faith and died in distress at Rome, the distant colony 
also declined, and after a short though peaceful career*, 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 131 

ended in utter destruction. In America also the place 
that once knew the unfortunate queen knows her no more, 
and when an accident recalls her memory, the wonder is 
great. Thus men marvelled when, upon building a new 
fort on the old site, a small silver coin was found on the 
spot, with the arms of the house of Vasa on one side, and 
on the other the inscription, '• Christina D. G. Re. Sve. 
1633. " It was only when on the reverse were read the 
words : Moneta Novi Regni Suec, Coin of the Kingdom of 
New Sweden, that the Christina of the face was recog- 
nized as " By the Grace of God Queen of Sweden." 

.The stately name of St. Augustine conjures up before 
our mind's eye the brave company of Spaniards, who, on 
September 2d, 1562, under their gallant leader Menen- 
dez, sailed up the beautiful bay, which was then first seen 
by Europeans, and bestowed upon it the name of one of 
the most eloquent sons of Africa, and at the same time 
one of the most venerated fathers of the Church, whose 
day it was in the calendar. What a brilliant pageant it 
must have been, when the great captain landed at the 
head of an army of a thousand men, with banners flying, 
trumpets sounding, and heavy guns thundering for the first 
time over the glorious, peaceful landscape ! Before him 
walked the priest with the symbol of his faith borne by an 
anolyte, and amid solemn ceremonies and imposing dis- 
plays, the sacred name was bestowed upon the future city. 
Thus were the foundations laid of the town, which is by 
forty years the oldest in the Union, and which actually 
dates back to a time when no Englishman of any sect had 



132 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

yet set foot on the soil of America, long before the pil- 
grims landed at Plymouth, or Captain John Smith sailed 
up the King's River. But it is sad to think how soon 
the blooming fields of the infant town were to be baptized 
in blood ! For only a few days later Jean Ribault entered 
the same waters, and was followed a year later by Laudon- 
niere with his Protestant soldiers, and forthwith broke 
out the fierce, passionate warfare that had already del- 
uged the Old World, cursing the New World also with its 
terrible deeds of violence. Ere the year had come to a 
close, the blood of six hundred brave Protestant French- 
men had been poured out like water upon the virgin soil, 
and the boastful declaration of the victorious Spaniards, 
that they had slain them " not as Frenchmen but as here- 
tics, " proclaimed to the amazed world that Abel's mur- 
der bore its bloody seed in America also. To this day 
the horror of the massacre seems to cling to the spot, and 
while the traveller looks with wonder at houses in St. 
Augustine bearing the date of 1571 as the year of their 
erection, he shudders with awe as he beholds the subter- 
ranean ceils in which but a few years ago workmen found 
long iron boxes standing upright, each of which con- 
tained a human skeleton in irons. In noble contrast with 
the terrible christening of the old town of St. Augustine 
stands the manner in which the Golden City on the 
Pacific obtained its saintly name. Here, in the year of 
our nation's birth, a band of devoted Spanish monks, full 
of holy zeal and willing self-denial, founded a modest sta- 
tion to proclaim the glad tidings of "peace upon earth 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. I33 

and good-will among men " to the Indians of that region. 
The old " Mission, " built of adobe bricks, still stands, 
lonely and deserted, about three miles south of the stately 
City Hall, which crowns the great city, to which the Fran- 
ciscan brethren bequeathed the name of their patron 
saint, San Francisco de Assisi. 

A few of our town names are suggestive of great his- 
torical associations, which, like other events of the kind, 
seem likely to be soon entirely effaced from the memory 
of coming generations. Thus there nestles in the West- 
ern part of Old Virginia a modest little town in the 
mountains which bears a name that once graced an 
Empire. The great Lord Botetourt had in England a 
country-seat called Fin Castle, and this name he bestowed 
in 1774 upon a part of a county, which already was known 
by his own name as Botetourt County. The region was 
inhabited by a mere handful of settlers, and the county- 
seat, the ancestor of the present town of Fincastle, con- 
sisted of little more than a few humble log cabins. But 
the County, thanks to the ignorance which in those days 
still prevailed as to ail the territory lying west of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, was described in the Act of Assembly, 
that gave it a legal existence, as " extending to the Mis- 
sissippi ! " And so it did, for only two years later a slice 
was taken from it to make the great State of Kentucky, 
while the remainder was cut up into more counties, the 
town alone retaining its name of Fincastle. Another off- 
spring of the little village was Fort Fincastle, to which it 
gave its name about the same time, when it was deemed 



134 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

important to protect the western part of the country, on 
the Ohio, by a considerable stronghold against Indians 
and Frenchmen. The fort, when refitted a few years 
later, was re-christened Fort Henry, in honor of the great 
Patrick Henry, then Governor of Virginia, and finally 
grew up into the city of Wheeling. 

Very different interests are connected with some of the 
twin-names in which not a few of our towns rejoice. 
Thus Saybrook, in the State of Connecticut, perpetuates 
the united memory of Viscount Say and Seale and of 
Lord Brook. The former had purchased of the unfortu- 
nate Pequods, in 1634, a portion of their territory in order 
to carry out the purposes of a grant which the Earl of 
Warwick had assigned to John Pym, John Hampden and 
other famous Puritans of his day, who wanted a place of 
retreat from the persecutions with which they were threat- 
ened. Lord Brook, one of the staunchest puritans in Eng- 
land, had not, like Lord Say and Seale, come over him- 
self, but sent his agent, George Fenwick, to purchase lands 
and lay out a town at the mouth of Connecticut river. 
Wilkesbarre, in Pennsylvania, on the contrary, bears the 
joint names of the great agitator John Wilkes and Colo- 
nel Barre, in grateful acknowledgment of their advocacy 
of the American cause during the struggle of the revolu- 
tion. Perth Amboy, a town of New Jersey, on the other 
hand, seems to show by the unwillingness of the two 
names to combine into one, the different origin of the two 
elements : the former being taken from James, Earl of 
Perth, one of the two proprietors of East Jersey, the lat- 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 35 

ter a corruption of the original name of Ompage, by which 
the Indians designated the place, and which occurs quite 
frequently yet in the early records of New Jersey. Thus 
it is called even in the works of Richard Barclay, whom 
Oldmixon calls " the famous " Scotch Quaker, who wrote 
a defence of Quakerism in better Latin than any of his 
answerers could boast. 

There are scattered all over the Eastern states a large 
number of towns which startle the visitor from foreign 
shores at first sight by their peculiar biblical character. 
With a few exceptions, such as Ephrata in Pennsylvania, 
these places belong all to that remarkable brotherhood of 
excellent pious men who are among us generally known 
as Moravians, while their legal title is the Unitas Fratrwn, 
the United Brethren, bestowed upon them by Great Brit- 
ain in 1737. Moravia, on the Owasco Flats, in the State 
of New York, bears still the name of the original home of 
the brethren, who came mostly from Moravia and Bohe- 
mia, and had formerly one of the most successful Indian 
schools of the North ; its namesake in distant Kansas is, 
on the other hand, among the youngest of such settle- 
ments. For their eminently practical and simple plan is 
to go wherever there seems to be a need for the preaching 
of the gospel, and as their devoted sons and daughters 
used to accept the helpmate intended for them by the 
divine will, as the lot, reverently cast amid invocations 
of the Deity, decided for them, so they obeyed the same 
self-chosen voice as to their future destination in any part 
of the globe. Thus they once showed strikingly their true 



I36 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

character as a United Brotherhood, embracing all the 
children of men without distinction, when a number of 
their followers arrived in May, 1749, in the city of New 
York. They brought with them two intelligent natives of 
Greenland, who had been converted and consecrated as 
ministers of their faith, and were met there by a deputa- 
tion of brethren from Philadelphia, containing two of our 
own Indians and two natives of Surinam, who had in like 
manner been brought under the influence of the gospel, 
and gladly joined hands with the new-comers. Occasion- 
ally their settlements in the New World were named so 
as to recall special memories of the Old World, as when 
Wachoria, a lordly domain of 100,000 acres in North 
Carolina, was so called after the Vale of Wachau, formed 
by a river in Austria, the Vir Wash, and owned by the 
ancestors of the great Count Zinzendorf, whose benevo- 
lent acts and signal services are gratefully remembered in 
this country as well as in Europe. Lites, in Pennsylva- 
nia, leads us still farther back, for it bears the name of a 
domain in Bohemia, where George Podiebrad, Regent of 
the kingdom, established the very first congregation of the 
United Brotherhood to serve God in quietness and peace, 
in contrast with the fierce and relentless proceedings of 
their more violent brethren, the Tabontes. This is one 
of the few Slavic names which we have preserved in our 
country, and recalls the ancient date of 1457, which some 
of the brethren look upon as the year of the foundation of 
their church. 

The precise date when the first Moravians reached 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 37 

this country has not yet been absolutely settled, but 
their first permanent station was in all probability an 
Indian school, established in 1735, at Ebenezer, on an 
island in the Savannah river, about an hour's sail above 
the city, to which the " king of the Creeks came to hear 
the good word." They were not allowed long to live in 
peace here, for upon a war breaking out with Georgia's 
implacable enemies, the Spaniards, they were summoned 
to take up arms and assist in the defence. As this was 
against their principles, they preferred to abandon their 
new homes, their worldly goods and all their bright hopes, 
and moved in a body to Pennsylvania, then the asylum 
of all persecuted men, and here, on a branch of the Dela- 
ware, which they called the Lecha, but which has since 
been Anglicised into Lehigh, they attempted once more 
a mission among the Indians. The principal settlement 
was to be called Beth-lechem, the House on the Lehigh, 
but Count Zinzendorf, who was then travelling through 
this country in behalf of the Brotherhood, changed the 
name. He had reached the place a day or two before 
Christmas (1 741), and celebrating the great festival in the 
roomy stable of the only cabin which then marked the site 
of the town, he improvised, during the watches of Christ- 
mas Eve, a hymn, beginning with the words : " Not Jesus, 
no Bethlehem ! " This line, the place and the date of its 
composition, led to the name of Bethlehem being chosen 
for the new mission, which soon grew in size and impor- 
tance and is now one of the chief places of the Moravians. 
Almost all the early names of their subsequent settlements 



138 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

were given by Zinzendorf, either in person or by letter ; 
some merely from choice, as Bethel and Hebron, others 
from an accidental coincidence, as Emmaus, which was 
found to be just as far from the new Bethlehem in the 
New World,- as the original Emmaus was from Jerusalem. 
Nazareth, however, had already been named by John 
Whitefield, who, after his failure at Savannah, had pur- 
chased a superb domain in the forks of the Delaware, to 
which were attached the right of holding a Court Baron, 
and other, now extinct, privileges. Before the large stone 
building, of which he laid the foundation, could be com- 
pleted, he left the place, and sold his " Manor of Naza- 
reth " to the Moravians. It was from here that the 
intrepid Zinzendorf, with his Wing daughter and a few 
converted Indians, set out on a pilgrimage through the 
wilderness, then unexplored and full of peril, and on this 
occasion he beheld, the first European, the beautiful val- 
ley of Wyoming, that was so soon to become the scene of 
one of the most tragic events in our history. And yet, 
Moravian records point to an even more disgraceful act, 
which will probably forever remain a mysterious blot on 
the American name. For a few years afterwards some 
Moravians had moved westward, with a few Praying 
Indians, and settled in the forks of the beautiful Muskin- 
gum River, at a place they called Schoenbrunn, Fair 
Spring, in the midst of Delaware and Mohican Indians, 
for whose conversion they labored with their usual zeal 
and touching self-denial. Here dwelt the noble-spirited 
Logan, so long the friend and at last the victim of the 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 39 

whites ; here labored the pious Heckewelder, whose 
daughter Maria, born April 16, 1781, was the first native 
" Buckeye." But here also appeared, in the month of 
March of the following year, a Colonel Williamson, with 
a body of American troops, and, under the pretext of pun- 
ishing the treasonable sentiments of the Brethren, sur- 
prised, captured and murdered all the inhabitants. Pen- 
ning up the men in one " slaughter house," and women 
and children in another, he allowed ninety-six innocent 
beings to be massacred and scalped ! No wonder that 
the Beautiful Fountain ran with blood and was speedily 
forsaken, never again to become the home of happy men. 
Much might finally be said of the towns in our land, 
that have, with American fickleness, changed their names, 
even as men do among us for good or bad, or no reasons 
at all. The motive seems often to have been incredibly 
trifling, as was the case with a well-known beautiful vil- 
lage in the State of New York, near the famous falls in 
the Hudson River. The Indians called it naively Che-pon- 
tuc, a difficult place to get around, as they knew from their 
experience ; then a man from Dutchess County, Abraham 
Wing, held the land under a grant from the Crown, and 
the place became known as Wing's Falls. His son, how- 
ever, in a drinking bout, sold the place, with the right to 
name it, for a supper ; and when the feast was over, the 
purchaser, John Glenn, instantly posted handbills on all 
the bridle-paths which then led from the falls to Schenec- 
tady and Albany announcing the change in name, and 
Glen's Falls it has been to the present day. Other 



140 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

cases are of greater interest, but we must content our- 
selves with noticing two among the many which may 
fairly serve as types, and, at the same time, enforce the 
importance which commends such researches to all faith- 
ful students of history. Wood, in his well-known New 
England Retrospect, speaks of a place near the coast 
which the Indians once upon a time called Misbaumut, 
but he vouchsafes no explanation, haply not possessing 
one, and simply adds, that it was also known as Shawmut. 
This term is fortunately significative and means Sweet 
Water, and near this place lived one of the many strongly- 
marked characters of those early days, in which the aim 
of education was not yet to stamp all men alike with the 
same mark, that they might thus all become " free and 
equal." In a solitary cottage, and apparently without any 
means of support, lived the Rev. W. Blackstone, a min- 
ister of the Episcopal Church, and a great thorn in the 
side of his neighbors. Dr. Mather said of him, sneeringly : 
This man was of particular humor and would never join 
himself to any of the New England churches, giving his 
reason for this, that as he came from England because he 
did not like the Lord Bishops, so he could not join with 
them, because he would not be under the Lord Brethren. 
Nor does this wrath seem to have subsided yet ; for Haw- 
thorne, in his charming romance of Merry Mount, repre- 
sents the reverend gentleman, though with a cautious 
reservation, as dancing around the May-pole ! In an 
unguarded moment he told his jealous brethren at Charles- 
town of an excellent spring near his cabin ; they imme- 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 141 

diately came to examine it, they tasted the water, and they 
determined to have the land. But he was by no means 
willing to give up so easily what he considered his own. 
They had to pay him his price, and revenged themselves 
on him by saying that he demanded money " because he 
happened to be the first man who stepped on shore ! " A 
settlement was at once made, and the foundation laid 
for a new town. They named it, in 1633, in honor of the 
Rev. John Cotton, the " Patriarch of New England," who 
was their leader, their pastor and their lawgiver. He 
,had been rector at St. Botolph's, in Boston, Lincolnshire, 
England, and had given up his ample income, his high 
position and a large part of his devoted flock to cast in 
his lot with the smaller portion, his fellow-pilgrims, who 
sought under his guidance a peaceful home among the 
savages of the New World. He landed on the coast of 
New England in September, 1633, in company with other 
eminent divines, whose names, like his own, gave comfort 
to the poor pilgrims after their own grim and quaint fash- 
ion. " We have now," they said, " nothing more to fear, 
since we have Cotton for our clothing, Hooker for our 
fishing, and Stone for our building." Thus arose the city 
of Boston, for a time hesitating between the new name 
and Tremont, a more classical designation preferred by 
those who saw in the Tri-mountain City, as they called it, 
from the three hills on which it stands, a good omen of 
future greatness. But Boston it remained, and soon rose 
to such eminence that, in the North, Bostonais became 
the common French name for all Americans, down to the 



142 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

revolution, and in the far West the remoter Indians to 
this day have not ceased to call any white man they meet 
simply a Boston. 

The most interesting feature in the history of our great 
capital is the number of remarkable omens which, under 
various forms, seem to have foreshadowed the future great- 
ness of the city. That marvellous explorer, whose quaintly 
simple name we meet everywhere, from the northernmost 
coasts of New England to the spacious harbors of Vir- 
ginia, Captain John Smith, was probably the first Euro- 
pean who sailed up the River of Swans, the Potomac, to 
its falls, and in July, 1608, landed on the present site of 
Washington. ■ He found traditions and evidences alike 
that the Indians had for many a generation kept here one 
of their great council-fires, and thus he looked with special 
interest at the broad bay formed by the noble river. The 
first name connected with the place is curiously enough 
that of the " Widow's Mite," under which designation a 
tract of land, containing 600 acres, and lying " on the 
East side of Anacostia river, on the North branch or 
inlet in the said river, called Tiber," was granted to a cer- 
tain William Langworth, on July 6th, 1661. So untrue 
was Moore's sneering line, that 

" What was Goose Creek once is Tiber now." 
A certificate, dated June 5, 1663, describes this land as 
carefully surveyed and situated at the mouth of a bay or 
inlet, called Tiber, and from that day no change has taken 
place in the name of the river. The site, however, became 
soon after known as Roon, and a city was laid out — 



A FEW TOWN NAMES. 1 43 

though not built — in 1693, with the same modest rivulet 
running through its centre. Tradition adds to this fact 
the information that a Mr. Pope at that time built a house 
on the place, where the magnificent Capitol now rears its 
lofty dome, and called it the Capitoline Hill, while he 
bestowed upon the grounds that surrounded it the name 
of Rome — perhaps with a slight allusion to his thus 
becoming the Pope of Rome. Nothing was done, how- 
ever, besides this prophetic action ; and even when Wash- 
ington encamped with Braddock's forces on the hill on 
which the National Observatory now stands, he was almost 
alone in his enthusiastic admiration of the beautiful site. 
As if to add another omen to the preceding promises, he 
actually drew up a plan for a city to be built here,, and 
two towns, Carrolsburg and Hamburg, were really laid out 
and projected on the present site of Washington. Nor 
were there other great men wanting to support his excel- 
lent judgment, and among them Richard Henry Lee's 
father, Thomas Lee, one of the leading men of the Atlan- 
tic colonies, was especially loud in his praises. He had 
long turned his attention to the regions lying West of the 
Alleghanies, and used to say that " he had no doubt 
America would declare herself independent of Great Brit- 
ain and the seat of the new government would be near the 
little falls of the Potomac." He proved the strength of 
his convictions by acquiring large tracts of land near the 
falls, which, down to the last generation at least, were still 
in the possession of bis descendants. Thus all seemed to 
be prepared for the future greatness of the city, and when 



144 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

subsequently David Burns, the proprietor, conveyed his 
land to the first commissioners appointed for the purpose, 
the change from the village in the woods to the capital of 
the Union was vividly represented by the change in the 
name from the "Widow's Mite" to the "City of Wash- 
ington.' 




KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 

-v. 

N a forlorn, desolate part of our Atlantic 
'coast there lies a lonely island rarely found 
W on general maps, little known in history 
even, and yet appealing to every feeling of 
ouk heart by a sad tragedy which it wit- 
nessed long before brave Captain Smith 
sailed up the King's River or the Mayflower came in sight 
of Plymouth Rock. Years before, on a warm July night 
in 1584, two valiant sailors, sent by the great Raleigh, had 
made land here, and, unfurling the lion flag of the Tudors 
for the first time in sight of the virgin Continent, had bro- 
ken the stillness of the evening air with the thunder of a 
saker. Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow, the two cap- 
tains, then made their way inland, through crooked inlets 
and a maze of countless channels, till they reached, 
twenty miles up the river Occam, an island called Ro- 
anoke. But they did not stay long ; their minds were 
fairly overcome with wonder at all they saw ; a strange, 
unknown land, abounding with trees and shrubs never 
beheld before, forests filled with birds of rich plumage 



146 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

and beasts of marvellous shapes, and above all, men of a 
red color, clad in savage fashion, but rich in stores of 
pearls, and eloquent in the praise of neighboring lands 
where gold and silver were found in profusion. So they 
gazed their fill, and, ere the summer had passed, bent their 
course homeward again, reaching England in early Sep- 
tember, and astounding the world with countless rumors 
of new and glorious discoveries. They made their report 
to Raleigh, delighting his noble heart and filling his soul 
with ambitious plans and magnificent visions of the future; 
they deeply interested learned philosophers and astute 
divines, and finally were sent for to appear at Court and 
tell the Queen's majesty of the new country and the wild 
men they had discovered. Elizabeth was highly pleased 
with the honor thus conferred upon her reign and with the 
prospect of extending her power over new domains, and 
ever most liberal where no expense was incurred, she 
rewarded Raleigh by bestowing upon him knighthood, and 
honored the newly-discovered land by naming it Virginia. 
She did this, says an old historian quaintly, V as the great- 
est mark of honor she could do the discovery," and called 
it Virginia " as well for that it was first discovered in her 
reign, a Virgin Queen, as that it did still seem to retain 
the Virgin purity and plenty of the first creation and the 
people the primitive innocence." ( R. Beverly, Pr. State 
of Va. p. 3). 

Thus it was that Roanoke became the first great and 
memorable name in our early history. The word meant 
a special kind of shell-fish, but whether the ill-fated island 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 47 

received its Indian name from the fact that on it were 
" found great store of muskles " (Hakluyt Voy. III. 3051), 
or the shells were so called from the locality, is still an 
open question. We only know that there was " a sort of 
beads current among the Indians, but of far less value, 
and this is made of cockle-shell, broke into small bits with 
rough edges, drilled through in the same manner as beads, 
and this is called Roenoke and used as the Peak " (Bev- 
erly Pr. State of Va. p. 59). Captain John Smith, with his 
usual marvellous accuracy of facts and utter disregard for 
sounds, speaks of Raurenock, the common shell-money of 
the Indians, and adds shrewdly that it was " the occasion 
of as much discussion among salvages as gold and silver 
among Christians" (Virginia, p. 158). 

A year elapsed, and once more English ships brought 
English adventurers to the charming regions of the now 
world-famous island. This time, however, they came pre- 
pared to stay ; and Ralph Lane, the Governor, having 
erected a small fort " with sundry decent dwelling-houses " 
at the northern extremity of the island, wrote the first let- 
ter ever sent from distant America to the home-country. 
It was dated from the " New Fort in Virginia," in " the 
harborough at Roanoak," and bore date of September 3, 
1585. Fortunately it fell into the hands of a great scholar, 
whose marvellous intelligence foresaw instinctively the 
priceless value which posterity would attach to the docu- 
ment, and thus it was preserved in his papers and pub- 
lished with other precious relics of those days, as origi- 
nally addressed to " Master Richard Hackluyt, Esq., of 



148 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

the Middle Temple. " Ralph Lane remained with his little 
band of sailors and soldiers for nearly twelve months on 
the island, examining." the hundred islands " that dotted 
the picturesque coast, and sallying forth, every now and 
then, to search for the fabulous regions far inland, where 
gold and silver were said to abound, " with ample store 
of precious pearl." They were a chosen band of noble 
men, who thus obeyed the impulse given by the great 
Raleigh, and, at his bidding, went forth to behold the won- 
ders and to secure the treasures of a New World. Never 
before and never since has a little, lonely island like Roan- 
oke seen such a lordly company, in which matchless valor, 
profound learning and pure virtue were so happily blended. 
There was Ralph Lane, soon after to be knighted by the 
Queen for his many great exploits as a soldier ; there was 
Sir Richard Grenville, one of the master-spirits of his age, 
who commanded the fleet ; Cavendish, the first bold mari- 
ner that ever sailed around the globe ; with a celebrated 
painter who transferred the marvels of Virginia faithfully 
to canvas ; and above all, Thomas Hariot, the historian, 
naturalist and mathematician, whose fame has come down 
undimmed to our own generation. And yet there was 
still another man on board the ships that brought this rare 
assembly of heroes and of scholars, whose name ought to 
be dearer to us than any of the others. Amidas and Bar- 
low had persuaded an Indian, called by them Manteo, and 
first mentioned on April 26th, 1585, as " a salvage, " sim- 
ply to accompany them on their homeward journey to 
England ; he had there excited the utmost curiosity and 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 149 

the deepest interest, for he was the first Virginian ever 
seen in the Old World, and, at the same time, the " friend 
of the English," a title he had already earned by many a 
kindly service, and was to deserve still more fully by sub- 
sequent deeds. Upon the arrival of Lane he was sent to 
the main to announce the wishes of the new-comers ; he 
guided them in their restless, eager wanderings ; he saved 
them from many a danger, and more than once from fam- 
ine and sudden destruction by treacherous tribes, and soon 
was looked upon by high and low as a friend and a bro- 
ther. It was he, no doubt, who aided Hariot in studying 
the virtues of tobacco, which he firmly believed to possess 
great healing powers, who made known to him the mar- 
vellous fruitfulness of maize, and taught him to appreciate 
the pleasant taste and nutritious qualities of the potato — ■ 
all of them plants now first made known to the children 
of the Old World. For a year the English continued on 
the island of Roanoke, but as the promised precious met- 
als could not be found, as stor.es became scant and luxu- 
ries came to an end, they willingly seized the offer of Sir 
Francis Drake, whose fleet opportunely appeared " in the 
wild road of their bad harbor," and embarked for home. 
This desertion of the new country caused deep disap- 
pointment throughout all England, and only one stout 
heart remained firm in its fixed purpose. This was 
Raleigh ; undismayed by failure and serious losses, he 
determined instantly to repair the misfortune and to send 
out a new colony, well fitted to form a permanent settle- 
ment on his favorite island. The month of July, of the 



150 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 

same year, 1587, saw a third fleet of brave Englishmen 
land on Roanoke Island, and among them the first woman 
that beheld the New World. In Sir Walter Raleigh's 
"indenture of grant," dated 17th January, 1587, John 
White and eleven others are directed to go to "the lately 
discovered barbarous land and countries, called Assama- 
comack, or WTngandocoia, or Virginia," (Oldy's Life of Sir 
W. Raleigh), and in April the new Governor, with 117 
men, women and children, set out on his ill-fated voyage. 
They landed once more on the island ; they met once 
more their faithful friend and ally Manteo, "that behaved 
himself towards us as a most faithful Englishman," and 
induced the Indians, who at first seemed determined to 
prevent a landing, " to throw away their armes " and to be 
friends. Their first welcome, however, was sad ; and who 
can wonder that their hearts were at once filled with evil 
forebodings ? Sir Richard Grenville, unwilling that his 
countrymen should lose the newly-won country entirely, 
had left fifteen brave men on the island, to be the guardi- 
ans of English rights. For these the new settlers looked 
with eagerness and deepest interests ; but Manteo, when 
questioned about them, was ominously silent, and when 
they reached the fort they found the cabins in ruins, the 
gardens browsed by wild deer and the ground strewn with 
bleached bones ! Their hearts sank within them, and all 
the beauty of nature and all the exuberant richness of the 
soil could not efface the ineffable sorrow that had fallen 
upon their souls at the dismal sight 

Their forebodings were but too soon to be fulfilled. 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 151 

At first all went on well, and great was the joy and bright 
were the hopes of the English, when the foundations of 
the great city of Raleigh were laid at the place where a 
fort had been built by Ralph Lane, and the mother and 
kindred of Manteo welcomed them solemnly and cordially 
to their new home. The month of August, especially, was 
ripe with stately ceremonies and happy events. On the 
thirteenth of that month Manteo, the " faithful English- 
man," was baptized, and at the special command of the 
proprietary of Virginia, Sir W. Raleigh, clothed with the 
full rank and honors of a feudal baron. All the formali- 
ties of such an investiture that were possible under the 
circumstances were scrupulously observed ; the new peer 
was solemnly invested with the dignity of "Lord of Roan- 
oke and Baron of Dassamonpeach, in token of his faith- 
fulnesse," and thus Virginia and all America beheld the 
first — and only — peerage ever bestowed upon a son of the 
soil (Bancroft Hist, of the U. S., I. p. 105). It is not a 
little curious that the only man who ever bore the same 
title in a more modest fashion claimed with good right to 
be a descendant of the great Emperor of Virginia, for 
John Randolph of Roanoke, so called to distinguish him 
from his kinsmen, the Randolphs of Tuckahoe, Dungeness 
and Cures, traced his pedigree back to Powhatan, the 
father of Pocahontas. 

Unfortunately no further trace can be found of the 
first native nobleman in the annals of our land ; he prob- 
ably valued the well-mer.it honor as little as Powhatan 
did the royal crown sen him from England, and soon 



152 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

exchanged it for the more substantial dignity of Werowa- 
nee of his own nation. 

One more bright gleam of sunshine lighted up the hearts 
of the colonists of Roanoke, before that dark gloom fell 
upon them, which has hid them forever from the eye of man. 
On the 18th of the same month the Governor's daughter, 
who had married Ananias Dare, one of the assistants, pre- 
sented him with a child, which, being the first Christian 
infant born on this Continent, was baptized on the follow- 
ing Sunday and called Virginia. (Hakluyt Voy. III. 345). 
The student of history, who loves to notice quaint features 
and strange combinations in our early annals, cannot fail 
to be struck by the curious importance which seems to 
have been accidentally attached to the name of White in 
our history. Here was John White's grand-daughter, the 
first offspring of English parents on the soil of America. 
The first child born of English parents in New England 
was Peregrine White, the son of Susanna White, who 
gladdened the eyes of his father on board the Mayflower, 
as she lay, towards the close of November, 1620, in the 
harbor of Plymouth. Even the Catholic Church, denying 
to so many of her children the joys of paternity, seems to 
have put in her claims to the favored name, for it was a 
Father White, who, as chaplain to Leonard Calvert, in the 
year 1633, planted a cross and said holy mass near St. 
Mary's, and thus first consecrated the soil of the Land of 
the Sanctuary, the Terra Mariae. 

Soon after this happy event, the Governor, yielding to 
the urgent prayers of the timid colonists, sailed for home, 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. I S3 

in order to procure for them supplies and reinforcements, 
leaving behind him, with anxious heart, a hundred and 
eight souls that had been intrusted to his care, and among 
them, precious pledges, his daughter and his grand-child, 
Virginia Dare. Could he have foreseen the delays, the 
troubles, the dangers even, that awaited him in England, 
he would never have abandoned the infant colony, he 
would never have parted with those that were clearest to 
him on earth. But Fate had decreed it otherwise. It 
was only in 1590 that he could return to the island, but 
who can describe his anguish when he found the place 
utterly deserted ; who can follow him in his maddening 
efforts to recover his beloved ones ! With the calm of 
despair, in touching, simple words, he tells us : " We went 
up and down the He ; at last we found three faire Roman 
letters carved, C. R. O., which presently we knew to sig- 
nifie the place where I should find them according to a 
secret note between them and me. But we found no sign 
of distresse— then we went to a place where they were left 
in sundry houses, but we found them all taken downe and 
the place strongly inclosed with a high Palisade, very 
Fort-like, and in one of the chiefe posts carved in fayre 
capitall Letters : Croatan." (Master John White's Report, 

I590-) 

Thus ended the brief and sad history of the island 

that first saw Christian settlers and first gave its name to 

be a title to an American nobleman. His domain never 

held town or farm— only English graves. The mystery 

of the Continent had been broken by the bold explorers. 



154 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

but another mystery had promptly taken its place, never 
to be revealed to human eye. For the poor settlers had 
vanished, leaving no trace behind them save the mysteri- 
ous name, Croatan, now borne by a part of the ill-fated 
island. At the beginning of the century the remains of 
the tree were still pointed out to the curious traveller, on 
which the fatal word had been carved, and the Indians, 
with their usual tenacity in clinging to local traditions, 
have ever unerringly kept the remembrance of the site 
on which Master Ralph Lane built his stronghold and 
Raleigh hoped to found the city that bore his name. A 
gaunt, live oak, weather-beaten and bearing the traces of 
many a fierce tempest, stands now sentinel in the centre 
of the old bastion, a fit emblem in winter of the woe it 
once was fated to behold, and decked in summer with a 
thousand green vines, speaking eloquently of happier days 
to come. A like vague trace may possibly be found of 
the lonely settlers who once perhaps gathered around the 
sapling. Indian traditions speak of descendants of the 
first colonists as still living among their brethren in North 
Carolina. For Manteo, they say, a " faithful Englishman " 
to the end, and mindful of the solemn oath he had sworn 
as Lord of Roanoke, took the white men with their wives 
and children, to save them from being brutally murdered, 
to his own distant tribe ; there they dwelt and married 
and died, their children being adopted among the Hat- 
teras, and to this day careful observers firmly believe that 
traces of white blood may be clearly seen in the features 
and forms of these Indians. 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 55 

It was not till many generations had passed away that 
Virginia once more knew a Lord, who was one of her own 
citizens, and not merely an official sent by the home gov- 
ernment to rule the colony. From time of old the noble 
family of Fairfax seems to have had a liking for the Old 
Dominion, for already, in 1632, when the king made pro- 
fuse grants of land there, free from quit-rents and carrying 
with them the rights of sovereign authority, the first " Lord 
Fairfax held a Court baron " in Virginia (Burk. Hist, of 
Va. II. 38, note). It is not stated, however, that the great 
parliamentary general ever came over to enjoy his priv- 
ileges or that the grant descended to his children. But 
when Charles II. imitated his father's example, and, with 
equal disregard to the interests of the State and the rights 
of actual settlers, gave away millions of acres in many a 
single grant, the bond between the ancient family of the 
Fair Hair and the oldest colony of the crown in England 
was once more renewed. In the year 1697 the reckless 
monarch bestowed upon his two favorites, Lord Cole- 
peper (for so he signed his name) and the Earl of Arling- 
ton nothing less than " all the dominion of land and water 
called Virginia!" James II , on ascending the throne, 
made a new, full grant of the whole territory to the Cul- 
peper family in 1682, and through him it passed to the 
Fairfax. For the Lord Culpeper of those days had a fair 
daughter, of whom he wrote in a letter addressed to his 
sister, and dated from Boston, New England, October 5, 
1680: " I shall now marry Cate as soone as I can, and 
shall then reckon myselfe to be a Freeman without clogge 



156 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

or charge. T. Clp'r." He succeeded admirably in rid- 
ding himself of the " clogge," for the beautiful heiress 
became soon after the wife of Thomas, the fifth Lord 
Fairfax, and brought him, as part of her ample dower, a 
tract of land in Virginia, called the Northern Neck, and 
containing nearly six millions of acres. This magnificent 
domain, bounded by the two rivers Potomac and Rappa- 
hannock, and extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the 
head waters of the latter in the Blue Ridge, and of the 
former in the Alleghanies, fell, in 1710, to his eldest son, 
Thomas, together with several manors in Kent, and rich 
estates in the Isle of Wight. He began life with all the 
prestige that noble birth, ample fortune and unusual per- 
sonal attractions could! afford ; but the splendor of his 
military career and high rank, the flattering success of 
his contributions to the Spectator, and the renown he soon 
acquired at court and in town as a wit, could not console 
him when his fondest hopes were disappointed. His 
deeply-wounded heart sought consolation in foreign travel, 
and as he came from a good republican stock he natu- 
rally turned to the freer life and greater independence of 
the colonies. Thus he came to his magnificent domain 
in Virginia, and was so delighted with the great beauty of 
the land and the charms of society that he resolved to 
spend the remainder of his life there, though then not yet 
fifty years of age. For many years he lived at Belvoir, his 
superb country seat near Mount Vernon, and it was here 
that, in 1748, he first became acquainted with George 
Washington, then sixteen years old, and conceived for him 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 57 

an affection which soon ripened and was warmly returned. 
He was so much struck with the energetic and reliable 
character of the young man that he intrusted to him at 
once the responsible and often dangerous duty of survey- 
ing his lands in the beautiful Valley of Virginia. The 
enthusiasm with which the generally impassive American 
spoke of the lovely valleys and rich lands lying West of 
the blue Ridge excited the interest of the English peer ; 
he went to see for himself and found the land even fairer 
than it had been represented. He built himself at once a 
mansion in a beautiful manor of ten thousand acres, which 
he appropriately called Greenway Court, and here led the 
quiet but apparently happy life of a country-gentleman, 
delighting in field sports of every kind and dispensing the 
most profuse liberality to all who would visit his house. 
Plain and simple in his dress, modest and unaffected in 
his manners, his generosity alone was truly magnificent. 
To his brother Robert, who afterwards succeeded him in 
the peerage, he gave up all his noble estates in England, 
while in Virginia no neighbor or new settler ever came to 
his house in want of land on whom he did not promptly 
bestow enough to make him a home for life. Nor did the 
noble lord ever forget for a moment that he was also a 
citizen of the Colonial Commonwealth : he attended court 
regularly at the county town, twelve miles off, acting as 
presiding judge and keeping open table during the ses- 
sion, and performed with the same scrupulous fidelity the 
humble duties of Keeper of the Rolls of Frederick County, 
in which he lived. Eccentric in views and ways, he spent 



158 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

half his time in the fields and forests with his dogs and his 
horses, the daily routine being only interrupted when dis- 
tinguished visitors reached Greenway Court. Among 
these perhaps the most frequent and always the most wel- 
come was George Washington, who joined with enthusi- 
asm in his hunting-parties, and ever listened with defer- 
ence to his opinions, even when at a later period the Eng- 
lish peer tried to dissuade the American patriot from pur- 
suing the war. It would be difficult to say who was more 
honored by this mutual forbearance, the loyal lord or the 
wise captain. When Braddock's defeat laid the fair lands 
of the valley open to incursions from the Indians, the 
white-haired old Baron placed himself bravely at the head 
of a troop of horse, and sternly refused to leave his forest- 
home in spite of threatening dangers and urgent advice 
from all his friends. Nor did he waver for a moment 
when the revolution broke out, and all around him, 
endeared neighbors, life-long friends and near kinsmen 
joined the cause of freedom and left him to sigh and sor- 
row in his lonely, childless home. He could bear the 
seclusion, the abandonment and the courteous forbearance 
with which he was allowed to live unmolested in his seclu- 
sion, but when the cause of his king and his country was 
utterly lost, the proud lord's heart was broken, and he 
went to his fathers, having nearly completed a century of 
wayward but honorable life. 

The spirit of a free country is fatal to titles of honor 
as well as to estates of unfair proportions. This was 
strikingly illustrated in the history of the Lords Fairfax. 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 59 

The title; in absence of direct heirs for two or three gene- 
rations, went almost begging to uncles and nephews, and 
would perhaps be entirely forgotten by the great world 
but for the record in Burke and Debrett. The magnifi- 
cent estate long managed by the lord's kinsman, William 
Fairfax, of Bel voir, whose daughter married the elder 
brother of George Washington, and thus inaugurated a 
long line of intermarriages between the two families, dwin- 
dled away year after year, till now no trace is to be found 
of the princely domain. The reckless manner in which in 
those days fertile districts and rich territories were given 
and bartered away appears now almost sinful. Thus one 
of Lord Fairfax's early agents, a man by the name of Bur- 
den, had the good fortune of procuring a young buffalo 
calf while surveying his master's lands on the beautiful 
Shenandoah. He presented the strange animal to Gov- 
ernor Gooch, and received in return a grant of half a mil- 
lion acres "either on the Shenandoah or James River," 
on the sole condition of settling a hundred families there 
within ten years ! (De Hass. Hist, of Ind. Wars, p. 39). 
The lands are still known as Burden's Grant, and much 
of it is yet in the possession of his descendants. But the 
agent was in this case more fortunate than his employer. 
For already, in 1794, the great Northern Neck Grant had 
dwindled clown to 9700 acres, the whole of which was 
offered to a Mr. Carter, of Shirley, at forty shillings (Vir- 
ginia currency) an acre ! 

Thus it seems that in those early days — as for many 
generations afterwards — the active agent invariably pros- 



l60 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

pered, while the indolent owner of large estates went on 
wasting his estates and neglecting his interests. But 
the whole history of the Old Dominion presents no more 
striking instance of this strange but almost unfailing 
change of fortune than the succession of Lord Fairfax by 
King Carter. 

Not far from the banks of the Rappahannock River, 
where it spreads its beautiful waters as far as eye can 
reach, and is bordered by lands of surpassing richness 
and marvellous beauty, there stood once a stately church, 
built of English brick, and richly adorned with abundance 
of carving, with ample windows and costly damask cur- 
tains, all specially imported from the Old Country. It 
rose in massive strength and fair proportions in the centre 
of a noble grove of trees, and its silvery bell rang far over 
land and water. And as its summons were heard, car- 
riages approached on high- road and by-ways, boats were 
seen dashing rapidly up and down the gentle river, and on 
many a thorough-bred came swain and damsel, holding 
each other in timid embrace. But as they alighted in the 
grove, they ranged themselves, high and low, young and 
old, by the side of the massive entrance door, exchanging 
kindly greetings in an undertone, and glancing every now 
and then at the stately avenue of trees that led across the 
hill to the owner's mansion. At last two out-riders in gay 
livery appeared on the summit, half hid in a cloud of dust, 
then rose the outlines of a great coach and four, with 
wigged coachman and powdered lackeys ; it drew up near 
the church, and, a moment after, a stout, cheerful looking 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. l6l 

man appeared, leading a fair lady, whose gloved hand 
daintily touched his arm. A whole bevy of servants, wear- 
ing their master's colors, followed him at some little dis- 
tance, and, first of all who had assembled, he entered the 
sacred building. The little choir gathered in haste, the 
organ pealed forth the introitus, the minister arose from 
his chair, and soon the church was filled. There sat 
King Carter, as he was universally called, the lord of the 
manor, in his richly curtained and padded family pew ; 
there were his tenants, filling one half of the spacious 
floor, and behind him up to the door his livery servants 
and farm hands. As he had generously built the old 
church in place of a smaller one erected by one of his 
ancestors as early as 1670, on his own land, and out of 
his private purse, and still continued to bear all the expen- 
ses, no one complained of the large space he required, 
but most willingly did homage to the large-hearted, high- 
minded donor. There was no irony in the name they had 
bestowed upon him : if he was a king among them by the 
vast size of his domains, the immense wealth he possessed, 
and the great power he wielded by his wisdom as well as 
by his influence in high places, he was famous also for his 
royal bounty and the matchless generosity which charac- 
terized him in all his transactions. 

In England it is the king who makes the peer — here 
in Virginia it had been the peer who made the king. For 
Robert Carter had long been the agent and representa- 
tive of the two noble families of Culpeper and Fairfax in 
the distant colony, and had in course of time become the 
11 



1 62 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

real proprietor of the princely domain of the Northern 
Neck, though still paying the lordly owner an annual rent 
of three hundred pounds. In his own right he owned, 
besides, three hundred thousand acres of land and eleven 
hundred slaves — by far the largest fortune ever owned by 
private citizen in the old commonwealth. Nor had politi- 
cal preferments long waited to seek the shrewd business- 
man, the wise counsellor : he was, at least for one year, gov- 
ernor of the colony ; and then, for his lifetime, president 
of the King's Council, and Secretary of Virginia. There 
is something almost ludicrous in the but half-concealed 
awe with which his honors and titles, his wealth and his 
lands, are spoken of by William Strachey, Gent, first Sec- 
retary of the colony, in his " Historie of Travaile into Vir- 
ginia Brittanica." Apparently by an accident — though 
not perhaps altogether without a slight purpose — we are 
let into the secret of one source of the king's wonderful 
success in life. When he was Secretary of the Colony, it 
appears it was his duty to assign land-grants and to dis- 
pose of the still available regions in what was then called 
Western Virginia, the land at the foot and West of the 
Blue Ridge. A claimant would present himself in his 
office and make known to him his wish to obtain posses- 
sion of some rich bottom or well-watered pasture. Appar- 
ently doubtful as to its true condition, King Carter would 
call to his clerk in an adjoining room to see if the desired 
lands were yet taken up or not. The answer came 
promptly : if the land was poor, the claimant was grati- 
fied at once by receiving his patent ; but if it was rich and 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 63 

well situated, Robert Carter's name was instantly entered, 

and the poor applicant punished for the candor with which 

he had informed the Secretary of the value of his claim. 

Thus the king came to own a large portion of the most 

valuable land in all Virginia j among them the long, low 

mountain range with its rich and beautiful slopes, which 

still retains his name, and on its Northern extremity bears 

the home of Jefferson. Was it the memory of these and 

similar transactions in his busy, prosperous life, or was it 

mock modesty and rollicking recklessness, that made him 

write his own epitaph thus : 

Here lies Robin, but not Robin Hood, 
Here lies Robin, who ne'er did good, 
Here lies Robin, whom God has forsaken, 
Here lies Robin, whom the Devil has taken. 

The real epitaph, which, after his death, in 1732, was 
placed over his grave at the eastern end of the church, 
is in its quaint Latin redolent with sincere praise, and 
closes with the touching, truthful words : " The poor 
lament, having lost their comforter, the widows their pro- 
tector, the orphans their father." 

The noble church, King Carter's worthiest monument, 
still stands on the banks of the York ; its stout walls, 
three feet thick, are uninjured, its windows unharmed, its 
old marble font, the most beautiful in all Virginia, still 
stands before the first communion-table ever used, and 
even the old cedar dial posts, on which the name of John 
Carter, the king's father, is carved, with the date of the 
year 1702, has been preserved to this day. But "riches 
certainly make themselves wings," and the fate of the 



164 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

peer's magnificent domain has also been that of the king's 
great estate. The eccentricity that often cropped out in 
the life of the latter was inherited by his descendants, 
and perhaps not always held in check by the same good 
judgment and practical wisdom. Already his grandson, 
Counsellor Carter, of Nomini, astonished and shocked the 
world by becoming first a zealous Anabaptist, building 
even a chapel on his manor for the forbidden sect, then an 
enthusiastic Swedenborgian, and seeking finally rest for 
his mind and peace for his soul in the Church of Rome. 
The broad acres of the king were squandered, divided out 
and forfeited, till nothing is now left of his superb domain, 
and his kinsmen of our day seek distinction in virtues and 
merits tha't are better than " riches and great possessions." 
While Virginia had her genuine lord and her king of 
the Colony, South Carolina could boast of the only order 
of nobility that was ever legally instituted within the lim- 
its of the Republic. Nor is it the least interesting feature 
in this memorable scheme that the first Landgrave of 
Carolina was no less a person than the great philosopher 
Locke. It is well known how the latter, when a youthful 
student of medicine, had accidentally cured Lord Ashley 
of a dangerous disease, and how gratitude and esteem 
had gradually bound the two friends to each other in close 
union. When many years afterwards the nobleman had, 
as Earl of Shaftesbury, received with seven other persons 
a grant of the whole province of Carolina, he requested 
his friend to draw up a code of fundamental laws for his 
new domain. The famous constitution was a marvel of 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 65 

theoretical beauty and perfect method ; it commends our 
admiration even at this day for its bold avowal and prac- 
tical enforcement of religious liberty, and for the extreme 
ingenuity displayed in its cautious mixture of aristocratic 
institutions with popular laws. But practically it was a 
simple impossibility, and hence its life was short. Its 
Landgraves, hereditary lords with four barons under them, 
and its Caciques with two barons, never found an oppor- 
tunity to meet in their proposed Colonial Parliament, and, 
except for the mere sake of distinction, no use was ever 
made of the high-sounding titles, as no effect was ever 
given to their official powers. There is almost a stroke 
of poetical policy in the curious fact that the only Land- 
grave, of whom history ever speaks, bore the plebeian 
name of Smith. He was about to leave the province, in 
the year 1692, in utter disgust with its ill-fated constitu- 
tion and its unsafe condition, when a terrible storm drove 
an unlucky brigantine to seek shelter in the harbor of 
Charleston, under lee of Sullivan's Island. The crew, 
exhausted by a long voyage from Madagascar, was on the 
point of perishing, when the generous Landgrave went on 
board to provide for their wants. By chance he noticed 
a little bag in the cook's caboose, with a few odd-looking 
white grains in it, and was surprised to learn that that was 
rice. The little treasure-trove was at once presented to 
him by the grateful Malay, and he, in his turn, distributed 
the precious seed among his friends, adding such direc- 
tions as to their treatment as he had taken pains to obtain 
himself from the dusky cook. They were planted in gar- 



1 66 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

dens and throve ; they were set out in fields the following 
years, and brought rich crops, and thus the few little 
grains gave rise to the culture of rice, which now makes 
up largely the wealth of the State and keeps alive the mem- 
ory of Thomas Smith, the Landgrave of South Carolina. 

While Virginia had her Emperor, as Captain Smith 
always insisted upon calling the Chief of the Powhatans, 
and her society bestowed royal dignity upon the Marquis 
of Carabas of her early days, and long before Carolina 
boasted of Landgraves and Caciques, a Northern State 
witnessed a ludicrous effort to establish a new aristocracy 
and the first knightly order ever known to our land. 
There may be found in some of our best libraries a most 
rare, quaint-looking volume, one of the great puzzles of 
historians, and a dainty tit-bit for lovers of odd conceits. 
The author bears — or assumes — the high-sounding title of 
Beauchamp Plantagenet of Beloil, and calls his pamphlet, 
printed in 1648 : " A Description of the Province of New 
Albion in North America." On the second page of the 
little book there appear the " medall and riban " of the 
new order of the " Albion Knights of the Conversion of 
Twenty-Three kings," a copy of their arms and support- 
ers, and the unpoetical motto : 

All power of life and death, the Sword and Crown, 
On Gospel's truth shine Honor and Renown. 

The coat of arms, magnificently emblazoned according to 
strictest rules of heraldry contains a portrait of the twenty- 
two decapitated kings in the forms of so many "heads 
couped and crowned," held up by the twenty-third, who 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 67 

kneels down before them in savage costume and supports 
the shield. The head of this famous order of knights was 
no less a personage than the Earl Palatine, of New 
Albion, known in Shropshire, England, as modest Sir Ed- 
mund Plowden, and little regarded in Boston, where he 
sought help to establish his dominion, but found no sym- 
pathy with his knightly aspirations. Titles and surnames 
were all made ready for not less than forty-four lords, 
baronets and knights ; noble seats were provided for the 
head of the order, the most remarkable of which was 
" Mount Ployden, the seat of the Raritan king, a square 
rock a hundred and fifty feet high, the retired Paradise of 
the children of the Ethiopian Emperor," and others for 
the remaining knights — in fact the whole armor was pre- 
pared, from the crest on the helmet to the golden spur on 
the heel ; but no one was found willing to assume the 
strange garb and to convert the "twenty-three. Indian 
kings." It was at a time doubted whether the whole 
story was not perhaps a mere hoax or a clever swindle to 
allure colonists and sell lands in the distant colony — the 
scheme was so very extravagant and the Order so very 
fantastic. But on " a Mapp of Virginia discovered to ye 
Hills &c. Domina Virginia Farrer Collegit. Are sold 
by I. Stephenson at ye farme below Ludgate, 165 1, " New 
Albion is really entered in the neighborhood of what is 
now known as New Jersey, and on " Lord Delaware's 
Bay " this remark is made : "This River Lord Ployden 
hath a patent of and calls it New Albion, but the Swedes 
are planted in it and have a great trade of furs." And 



1 68 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

so it really was : the patent existed, Sir E. Plowden owned 
it, and New Albion was the name of his domain. But the 
explanation of the apparent mystery is given in Winthrop's 
History of England, which states that Sir E. Plowden 
came landless and penniless to Boston in 1648. " He came 
first with a patent of a county Palatine for Delaware Bay, 
but wanting a pilot for the place, he went to Virginia, and 
there having lost the estate he brought over, and all his 
people scattered from him, he came hither to return to 
England for supplies." Thus ended the first effort to 
establish an Order of Knights in our land, and the 
" twenty-three Indian kings " we fear were never converted. 
The next attempt — hardly deserving the name — was a 
pitiless joke, played at the expense of a vain Frenchman. 
Among the early officials in New France few were better 
known in Court circles at home than a brave but weak sol- 
dier, the Sieur de la Motte Cadillac. His place in Ameri- 
can history is one of no small distinction, for after having 
earned considerable renown in many a bloody battle at 
home and abroad, we hear of him starting, in 1701, from 
Montreal, with a hundred men and a " Black Gown," as 
the Jesuits were universally called, to punish certain 
refractory Indian tribes. On this expedition he built a 
fort and established a settlement at a prominent point in 
the river or strait of St. Clare near its connection with 
Lake Erie. The place became first known as the fort 
d'Etroit, soon to be merged in the city of Detroit, and Cad- 
illac has thus the merit of having laid the first foundations 
of the State of Michigan. In France he was far more 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 69 

widely and more popularly known by his letters, written 
to his patron, the famous Duke of Lauzun. They were 
full of the most naive avowals of every kind of weakness 
with which human nature may be charged, and abounded 
in blunders in word and in thought. Whenever one oi 
these epistles arrived from distant Canada, the clever 
courtier would take it with him to the levee, and, seizing a 
favorable moment, read it to the king. The unconscious 
ignorance, the matchless stupidity and the intense self- 
conceit they displayed, all were forcibly brought out by 
the witty prince, and they never failed to amuse Louis, 
and to cause shouts of laughter among the bystanders. 
No one wondered, therefore, when some time afterwards 
Cadillac's application to be made Governor of Louisiana 
was warmly supported by the ambitious favorite. " What 
divine letters, what priceless blunders we shall have from 
Biloxi ! " said Lauzun ; the king smiled and the appoint- 
ment was made. Cadillac left without regret the cheer- 
less forests of Canada, though not before securing by every 
legal form and title the valuable grants of land he had 
received on the waters of Frenchman's Bay, and sailed for 
his new government. Months passed and nothing was 
received in Paris but bitter complaints and tedious remon- 
strances. But at last a letter came that made ample amends 
and caused universal and lasting amusement at Court. It 
appeared that the good people of Louisiana had very soon 
discovered the weakness of their new governor and became 
impatient of his foolish orders and absurd demands. 
Courteous remonstrances and urgent requests had all 



I70 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

proved in vain. But when Cadillac finally withdrew from 
the city in high displeasure, and from his fort issued an 
order that no one should henceforth be allowed to wear a 
sword unless he had first proved his right to do so by 
noble descent or high official standing, they determined to 
have their revenge. A deputation of prominent and influ- 
ential men was sent to him, to lay before him for his appro- 
val the statutes of a new order of nobility, which they 
desired to establish, so that the colony also might, under 
his illustrious government, have its knights, its ribbons 
and decorations. Cadillac himself was humbly requested 
to accept the office of Grand Master of the New Order. 
He assented graciously, and immediately sat down to 
inform his patron of the great event and the signal honor 
the colony had chosen to bestow upon him, out of respect 
for his great talents and lofty virtues. The letter was 
written in his usual inflated style, related minutely all 
fonns and details of the new knighthood, and closed with 
the naive confession that its name was : The Illustrious 
Order of the Golden Calf ! All the solemn majesty effec- 
ted by Louis XIV. could not resist the matchless humor 
of the simple-minded governor, and the good people of 
Louisiana had their revenge. It need hardly be added 
that the new order was allowed to perish very soon ; but 
the memory of Cadillac's knighthood has not been effaced. 
Nor did he allow himself to be entirely forgotten at the 
North. For as late as 1785 there appeared in Massachu- 
setts a Mme. de Gregoire, who proved her direct descent 
from the renowned governor, and claimed, in his right, the 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. IJ I 

island of Mount Desert and a large tract of land in the 
neighborhood. The matter was duly examined, and in 
1786 the good lady's claim was duly acknowledged and 
confirmed ( James Sullivan, Hist, of Mass., p. 58). 

Very nearly at the same time, another, though more 
serious, effort was made in Virginia to establish there also 
an American order of knighthood. The beautiful range 
of mountains which divides the great State throughout its 
whole width, leaving the Piedmont and sea-board region 
on the east, and the great Valley of Virginia on the west, 
had long attracted the curiosity of explorers and the 
cupidity of adventurers. Though by no means of Alpine 
height, the Blue Ridge for many generations formed an 
apparently insurmountable barrier, and the unknown land 
beyond, heard of only through vague rumors and fanciful 
descriptions, became an Eldorado in the minds of the mul- 
titude. A Colonel Wood, it is true, was said to have 
crossed the Alleghanies in 1670, already bent upon trade. 
At least we are told that " Colonel Wood, inhabiting at 
the falls of James River, about a hundred miles west of 
Chesapeake Bay, discovered at several times several 
branches of the great rivers Ohio and Mechasebe " ( D. 
Coxe, Carolina, p. 113), but no account of his travels is on 
record, and no practical result was obtained from this 
enterprise. A few years later Sir William Berkeley had 
sent a Captain Batte, with a brave little company of four- 
teen Englishmen and as many Indians, to cross the moun- 
tains and to explore the unknown regions beyond. They 
ascended the first heights and were amply rewarded for 



172 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

their toil by finding here also wide plains and green savan- 
nahs, alive with flocks of wild fowl and herds of deer and 
buffalo, but before them rose new mountains, more rug- 
ged even and fuller of precipices than any they had yet 
ascended. The timid Indians refused to go further, and 
told wondrous stories of fierce tribes dwelling beyond, who 
made salt, and never allowed strangers to return when 
they once had entered their land. 

It was no slight undertaking, therefore, when a later 
Governor, Alexander Spotswood, determined at all haz- 
ards to cross the formidable barrier and to explore the 
mysteries they had so long shrouded from the eyes of men. 
There was much in his character and much in his pre- 
vious history to fit him specially for such an adventure. 
Born of Scottish parents in Tangiers, on the African 
coast, he had been trained from childhood up in camps 
and bivouacs. Rising by his valor only, for he had nei- 
ther birth nor rank to aid him, he was severely wounded 
fighting under the great Marlborough at Blenheim, and as 
a reward for his bravery and signal services appointed 
Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia. With indefatigable zeal 
and excellent judgment he devoted himself to the devel- 
opment of all the resources' of the colony, and thus also 
conceived the plan of exploring the Alleghanies. He was 
fully aware of the trials in store and the dangers he would 
have to encounter \ the pathless wilderness bristled with 
towering rocks and huge precipices ; wild beasts infested 
the mountains, and fierce Indians guarded with savage 
jealousy the few passes that led to the valleys beyond. 



173 

But he knew how to kindle the enthusiasm he himself felt 
in the breasts of others also ; the Assembly lent its aid, 
and hardly was his purpose made public, in 1710, when 
chivalrous youths from far and near flocked to the Middle 
Plantation to enroll themselves under their renowned 
leader. They felt all the romance of being the first to 
encounter "the Apalachian Mountains," as it was the 
fashion in those days to call them ; they burnt with an 
eager desire to see the far-famed regions beyond, and they 
felt, at the same time, no small satisfaction at the thought 
that they might thus foil the cunning plans of the French, 
whose policy it had long been to keep all the country 
beyond concealed from the English. It was a goodly 
show when the gallant band of cavaliers, with their gay 
retinue, set out on their romantic enterprise, at their head 
a well-tried warrior, and before them a new world full of 
wonders and strange adventures. Thanks to the prudence 
of their leader and the imposing array of their forces they 
met with no serious impediment : their enthusiasm easily 
overcame all natural obstacles, and their formidable 
appearance kept the Indians everywhere in check. The 
season was one full of hope and of promise, and the land- 
scape smiled in all the freshness of early spring upon the 
gay cavalcade. The first birds of spring were filling the 
forests with their early love-song ; the redbud and dog- 
wood were here and there putting forth their white and 
purple flowers, contrasting in marvellous beauty with the 
exquisite, tender green of the young tulip poplar leaves. 
The steep Alleghany hillsides glowed in the morning light, 



174 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

as the first rays of the sun fell upon the velvet carpet of 
rich grasses and the deep red gullies washed by the heavy 
rains, while below the swift rivers swept by, swollen by the 
melting snows and frequent April showers. The adventu- 
rers lingered in many a secluded vale ; they were often 
delayed by an impetuous mountain torrent or an impass- 
able precipice ; but at last all obstacles were overcome 
and they stood on the summit of the great mountain range. 
They felt at once that whatever toil and trouble they might 
have encountered they were amply repaid for all by the 
matchless beauty and imposing grandeur of the scene 
before them. There, at their feet, as far as their eye 
could reach, stretched out a vast champagne country, rich 
in all the best gifts of nature — a boundless domain, prom- 
ising ample support and a thousand homes to coming gene- 
rations. Spotswood, with his own hand, carved the name 
of his king on the highest rock of the mountain, which he 
called Mount George, and one of his devoted followers 
gave by a like act the name of Mount Alexander to the 
next highest summit. Then the merry band returned in 
triumph to their eastern homes. They had made the first 
certain discovery of a feasible passage across those moun- 
tains and broken forever the charm that had so long kept 
the English from extending their rule beyond the enchan- 
ted barrier. The governor "returned," says the old his- 
torian, "with a glory in those times little inferior to that 
of Hannibal " (Burk. Hist, of Va., I. p. 331), and received 
in the colony loud applause and warm admiration, and at 
the hands of his grateful monarch the honor of knighthood. 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 75 

But it was his desire and the wish of his brave followers 
to continue in Virginia also the memory of the great 
exploit, and thus he established an Order of Knighthood, 
not only for those who had accompanied him, but also all 
who should hereafter seek distinction and honor in like 
manner. He called it the Transmontane Order of the 
Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. The motto, refer- 
ring to the origin of the order, ran thus : Sic juvat tran- 
scendere monies ; the emblem was a small golden horse- 
shoe, worn on a short, scarlet ribbon. The device was 
chosen because horse- shoes, little known in Eastern Vir- 
ginia, which is comparatively free from stones, became of 
the utmost importance when travelling over rocky moun- 
tain heights, and had here, for the first time in the his- 
tory of Virginia, to be provided in considerable numbers. 
All the romance of the adventure, and all the attractions 
of new titles and dignities were, however, unable to com- 
pete successfully with the fatality which, from the begin- 
ning, seems to have defeated every effort of the kind in 
this country. The discovery remained fruitless, the explo- 
rer was rewarded with bitter ingratitude, and the order of 
knighthood was soon forgotten. For more than a genera- 
tion no attempt was made to cross the mountains again, 
and even the bold enterprise of John Howard, who, in 1742, 
followed the well-known pathways of deer and elk, and 
finally, in a canoe made of buffalo skin, sailed down the 
Ohio, was long considered as little more than a myth. It 
was mentioned by Kerchcoal (Valley of Va., p. 67), and at 
a later period by Du Pratz (Lond. ed., 1774) who stated 



176 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

that Howard was taken by the French on the Mississippi, 
thus securing to him unconsciously the honor of being 
the first Englishman whose visit to the West, though result- 
ing in no settlement, is distinctly authenticated. The 
enterprising governor, often described as "A. Spottis- 
woode," received little thanks from the home govern- 
ment and was even refused compensation for his heavy 
outlay of money. He retired, soon after the exploit, from 
political life, and spent his days at Germanna, his coun- 
try-seat in a county of Virginia, called after him Spotsyl- 
vania, and extending westward " to the river beyond the 
high mountains " (Act of Ass., 1720). Here he was visi- 
ted by the well-known Colonel Byrd, who humorously 
describes his residence thus : " This famous town consists 
of Governor Spotswood's enchanted castle on one side of 
the street, and a bakers dozen of ruined tenements on the 
other, where so many German families had dwelt some 
years ago. There had also been a chapel about a bow- 
shot from the Colonel's house, at the end of an avenue of 
cherry trees, but some pious people had lately burnt it 
down, with intent to have one built nearer to their own 
houses" (Western MSS., p. 131). The knights of the 
Golden Horseshoe were never mentioned again in the 
Annals of Virginia. 

The last and most recent order of knighthood, belong- 
ing not to colonial times, but to the days in which repub- 
lican principles would seem to have had most influence, 
has hardly yet existed long enough to allow us to judge of 
its usefulness. It is well known that some memorial of 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 77 

the perils, the privations and the triumphs of the War of 
Independence was ardently desired by the officers of 
the army, especially by the many foreigners who had 
bravely fought by the side of their American brethren. 
Washington did not at first encourage the efforts made 
for that purpose : he was too great, too wise and too mod- 
est to appreciate outward distinctions, but he yielded 
readily to the fondness which all soldiers exhibit for such 
decorations and to the merit of certain benevolent features 
which were to be grafted upon the order. At the head- 
quarters of General Steuben on the Hudson River, a 
meeting was finally held on May 13th, 1783, and here it 
was proposed and agreed that " The officers of the Ameri- 
can Army, having generally been taken from Ihe citizens 
of America, possess high veneration for the character of 
the illustrious Roman, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, and 
being resolved to follow his example, by returning to their 
citizenship, they think they may with propriety denomi- 
nate themselves The Society of Cincinnati." The great 
Roman was, of course, only the image of their beloved 
leader, who himself became the first president ; he was, at 
his death, succeeded by Hamilton and then by the Pinck- 
neys. Well-chosen emblems were devised, and skilfully 
made in France, for badges and ornaments, showing 
mainly the American eagle ; and blue and white colors for 
the ribbon, in compliment to the combined arms, the 
French and the American, by which the independence of 
the States had been secured. At first hereditary, the 
Order became, in obedience to public sentiment, at least 

»2 



178 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

in practice, elective, and continued in vigor till the second 
visit of Lafayette, who was its only surviving major-gene- 
ral. Extinct in several States, branches of the order still 
exist in others, though not one of the original members is 
now living. The order was always much less appreciated 
at home than abroad, where monarchical governments 
have learnt to derive great advantages from such decora- 
tions ; with us it produced no effect at all upon society, 
and will probably, ere long, survive only in the name of 
the Queen City, which in January, 1790, received the name 
of Cincinnata (not, as now, Cincinnati,) from Symmes 
and St. Clair, "in honor of the order of the Cincinnati, 
and to denote the chief place of their residence." 

Among the royal and noble personages who appear 
meteor-like in the annals of our early days, two mysteri- 
ous adventurers must not be forgotten, whose true history 
remains to this day a puzzle to historians, and a favorite 
topic of discussion with lovers of secrets. 

As early as the year 1668, when British rule was yet 
paramount in all the colonies and provinces of this conti- 
nent, there appeared on the banks of the Delaware a 
young man who soon attracted very general attention by 
his uncommon personal beauty, his winning manners and 
rare acquirements. He visited all the wealthier settlers, 
and was, after the manner of the day, every where hospita- 
bly entertained, and urged to stay as long as he liked. 
He called himself Count Konigsmark, and claimed to be 
brother to the far-famed lover of Sophie Dorothea, who 
was brutally murdered in the castle of Ahlden in presence 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 79 

of the Elector, afterwards George I. of England, and of 
Aurora, the fair favorite of another Elector, the mother 
of Maurice of Saxe. His high breeding and his familiar- 
ity with court matters in England, as well as in his native 
land, Sweden, made the claim appear natural ; besides, he 
was amply provided with means, and travelled with a cer- 
tain degree of stately splendor. The only vulnerable 
point was his strange familiarity with a man who bore the 
name of Henry Coleman, but was almost uniformly desig- 
nated by the common people as "the Fin." The appar- 
ent bond between the high-born nobleman and his very 
humble friend was the fact that they were both natives of 
Finland ; but, besides this, there seemed to be nothing 
they could possibly have in common. And yet they were 
continually seen, conferring in close intimacy now with the 
Swedish settlers on the banks of the river, and now with 
the Indians still to be found in the neighborhood. The 
noble Count explained this intercourse as the result of his 
desire to obtain himself all the information he wished to K 
procure about his country, its present advantages, and fu- 
ture prospects. What could induce " the Fin " to spend all 
the time which he did not devote to his illustrious country- 
man in the huts of the Swedes and the wigwams of the sava- 
ges was known to no one, and caused much wondering and 
guessing. All of a sudden Conningsmarke, as his name 
was then written (Proud. Hist, of Pa., p. 128), was arres- 
ted, and warrants issued for the apprehension of his friend 
also. The latter, however, who spoke several Indian lan- 
guages, had probably been warned in time, and escaped. 



ISO ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

In the trial it appeared that the foreign nobleman had 
been for some time engaged in nothing less than a con- 
spiracy with Swedes and Indians to raise a rebellion for 
the purpose of throwing off the yoke of the English, and 
establishing an independent kingdom ! There was no 
lack of evidence against the " Long Fin," as it seems he 
was called in the secret records of the plot, and as he 
haughtily refused to plead any excuse, or even to give any 
account of himself, he was promptly declared guilty, and 
sentenced to be hanged. He remained immovable, and 
declined to ask for mercy. For reasons which do not 
appear, the sentence was commuted to whipping at the 
stocks, and branding with the letter R (rebel), after which 
he was to be sent out of the country. The brutal punish- 
ment was duly inflicted ; the condemned man was sent to 
New York, where he was kept for a whole year in the 
" Stadthouse " and then sold as a slave to Barbadoes ! 
If he was an impostor, it must be admitted that he played 
his part with rare skill, and bore his fate with a fortitude 
and haughty indifference utterly at variance with the gene- 
ral character of such pretenders. If he was really what 
he claimed to be — what a strange chapter he added by 
his great crime and tragic fate to the history of a family 
already so famous in the world for its marvellous adven- 
tures and terrible misfortunes ! 

A greater mystery still shrouded for many years a fair 
and lovely lady, whose cruel sufferings and romantic wan- 
derings have furnished the plot for many a novel, and 
caused more tears to be shed, and more sorrow to be 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. l8l 

endured, than countless cases of far greater hardship. It 
was in the month of June, 1759, all nature was ablaze with 
the splendor of a Southern summer, that had not yet con- 
sumed the rich verdure of the hill-sides, when the little 
garrison of Fort Toulouse, in Louisiana, was in a state of 
utmost excitement. The lilies of France were waving 
proudly in the morning breeze, the guns shone bright in 
the early sun, and the soldiers were gathering around the 
gate, looking unusually happy and full of solemn expec- 
tation, for they had donned their best uniforms and were 
expecting a lady ! At some distance from the fort, and 
under the shade of vast-spreading live oaks, stood sev- 
eral groups of Indians, concealing their curiosity under the 
mask of stoic indifference. But even their impassiveness 
gave way, when suddenly one of the great guns boomed 
forth a welcome, awaking the echoes of forest and hill-side 
around, and followed by a discharge of small arms, while 
the delighted soldiers, released for once from the fetters 
of discipline, rushed down to the stream to gaze at the 
novel sight. There was their captain, a man of striking 
appearance and looking his best, thanks to the rich uni- 
form he had donned for the occasion, and the excitement 
he felt in his heart. There was a woman, the first white 
woman that had ever been seen in the lonely forests, hold- 
ing in her arms a beautiful child, dressed gorgeously in 
delicate tissues and costly laces, and there was, above all, 
a lady of wondrous beauty, stepping lightly out of the 
dingy boat and falling, weeping, into the captain's arms. 
The new-comers were received with a wonder akin to awe, 



1 82 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

and walked slowly up to the simple cabin prepared foi 
their reception, while the soldiers followed in silent admi- 
ration, and the red men looked haughtily at the white 
squaw that received so much homage. For even they 
were struck by the profound respect and exquisite cour- 
tesy with which the commander listened to every word 
that fell from his companion's lips, and the ready deference 
with which her slightest wishes were obeyed. At last the 
dooi was closed upon the strange group, and busy were 
the tongues that now discussed the new arrivals. 

The beautiful lady, they all knew, was their captain's 
wife, and the little infant their daughter. But who had 
she been before ? Then a marvellous story was told, and 
no one was found bold enough to doubt or to contradict, 
although they listened with wonder and almost trembled 
with vivid excitement, as the tale was unfolded. A fair 
German princess, Charlotte Christina Sophia, it was said, 
had been forced to marry the son of Peter the Great, Czar 
of all the Russias. She was the daughter of one of the 
many petty potentates who then abounded in the Holy 
Empire, and poverty and ambition had combined to hand 
her over to the Czarowitch Alexis, the future Emperor, 
although she and all the world knew him to be a man of 
fierce, uncontrollable temper, who little cared to conceal, 
under a thin, transparent varnish of refinement, the innate 
brutality of his race and his nature. The poor princess 
had to pay a fearful penalty for the apparent greatness bf 
her position ; it was all splendor and glory without, and 
fearful misery, unbearable wretchedness within. While 



133 

high and low fell upon their knees, and in abject humility 
lay at her feet whenever she appeared in public, she no 
sooner returned to her home than she was made thus to 
kneel before her own master, who beat and ill-treated her, 
like a true savage. In vain did she bear all with angelic 
sweetness ; in vain did her brother-in-law, the German 
Emperor, intercede in her behalf; in vain did even the 
mighty Czar, all-powerful in his realm, reprove his son — 
she was only made to suffer the more from the ill-will of 
her husband. At last the measure was filled to overflow- 
ing. She was on the point of giving birth to an heir to 
the crown, when brutal blows and drunken abuse des- 
troyed the infant, and brought her to the gates of the 
grave. It was while lying thus sick unto death, that kind 
friends and faithful servants devised a plan for her to 
escape from the terrible fate that seemed to await her 
without hope of deliverance. Physicians and attendants, 
priests and friends, all united in reporting her gradual but 
steady decline, and when at last her death was announced, 
no surprise was felt, and all Russia mourned and grieved 
for the loss of one whom they had learnt to love and to 
prize. Thanks to the devotion of all who had ever come 
in contact with the fair princess, her lying in state, he t 
solemn funeral and the final entombment, were all gone 
through with in perfect order and without the slightest 
suspicion. And yet she had never died ! For as soon 
as the physicians had declared her case hopeless, and 
refused admittance to any one, Aurora Konigsmark, the 
famous beauty, the friend of the King of Poland, had her 



1 84 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

quietly removed from the palace and concealed in the 
house of one of her German friends. When the funeral 
was over, and the excitement had somewhat subsided, she 
escaped from Russia under the protection of an old officer 
of her father's guard, and with him she landed on March 
21, 1 72 1, in Louisiana, passing unnoticed among the large 
number of German emigrants, whom the French financier, 
John Law, was then sending to his proposed colony in 
Arkansas. She lived for some years in Mobile, in quiet 
retirement, apparently the daughter of the white-haired 
old gentleman with whom she had arrived, and secluding 
herself rigorously from society, on the plea of her modest 
circumstances. But one fine day, as she walked thought- 
fully along the shore, she came suddenly against a young 
French officer, who started as he beheld her, and could 
by no effort of his suppress the intense excitement her 
sight had caused in his heart. From henceforth she met 
him everywhere, timidly watching her steps and gazing at 
her from afar with wondering, amazed eyes. At last he 
found means to be admitted to her house and soon dis- 
closed to her the fact that he had often seen her at St. 
Petersburg, when attached to the French embassador's 
suite, and that he had recognized her instantly at their 
first meeting. By a cunning stratagem he succeeded in 
throwing her companion off his guard and at last she con- 
fessed her great secret. It need hardly be added that 
such confidence soon grew into love, and that, when the 
fictitious father died, and left her unprotected, she could 
no longer resist her admirer's urgent prayers, and became 



KAISERS, KINGS AND KNIGHTS. 1 85 

the wife of the Chevalier d'Aubant. Thus, at least, he is 
called by Bossu, but Frederick the Great, who at one 
time became interested in the fate of the unfortunate prin- 
cess, speaks of him as Waldeck. For ten years they 
lived in the distant colony, enjoying such happiness as 
probably all the splendor of a great court and the prestige 
of an Emperor's consort could not have afforded her, and 
when d'Aubant was sent to the distant fort, his faithful 
wife followed him to share his exile and to cheer his lonely 
life. Tradition has it that she loved to visit the poor 
Indians in their wigwams, to caress their children and to 
read to them the word of God, as far as she could make 
herself understood. To this day a solitary chimney, built 
of rough stones, and standing in a desolate, treeless wil- 
derness, is pointed out as the site of her dwelling, and 
many are the wanderers from distant lands who visit the 
little town of Wetumpka (Ala.), in order to see with their 
own eyes the place, about three miles westward, where 
the great Czarowitch's wife lived so long amid French 
soldiers and savage Indians. 

When her husband's health began to fail and to defy 
the skill of Colonial practitioners, she left with him the 
scene of her happiness, accompanied him to France, and, 
upon his appointment as Major, to the island of Bourbon. 
Unfortunately the charming romance did not even last 
through her lifetime. Having become a widow, she 
returned with her daughter to Paris, where she was once 
more recognized by the tones of her voice as she was 
walking in the garden of the Tuilleries. The famous Mar- 



1 86 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

shal Saxe overheard her as she was conversing with a 
friend ; he drew near, examined her features for a moment 
and at once addressed her, hat in hand, as the princess 
he had known in his early days. She denied her identity, 
but not earnestly enough to be obeyed in her wish to be 
left unknown : and privately steps were taken to provide 
for her in accordance with her rank. For some unac- 
countable reason, however, she preferred returning to 
Wolfenbuttel, the land of her birth, and here at last ven- 
geance overtook her. She was again recognized, but this 
time not as Princess Sophia of Wolfenbuttel, but as one 
of the women attached to her wardrobe, who in her youth 
had not only borne some resemblance to her mistress but 
also stood high in her confidence. Consideration for her 
age and her many misfortunes induced the ducal family 
to deal leniently with the poor widow ; she was allowed a 
small pension, but ordered instantly to leave the country, 
and died, not long afterwards, in 1 771, in great poverty, 
in Vitri, near Paris. 




LOST TOWNS. 

VI. 

S the memory of man is happily so con- 
stituted that in course of time it ceases 
to recall with distinctness the darker 
days of our life, and only reflects bright 
and happy events, thus converting us all 
more or less into "garrulous praisersof 
former days," so history also is prone to record only the 
triumphs of a nation and to leave its failures and its sor- 
rows to be buried in oblivion. Our own annals, brief as 
they are, begin already to show the same tendency, based 
upon the vanity of nations, but turned by Providence into 
a great and precious blessing. How many Americans, for 
instance, recall with accuracy the nature of the Dark and 
Bloody Ground, so often mentioned in our early accounts, 
so fearfully suggestive of days of brutal cruelty and inef- 
fable suffering. We all have read, some time or other, that 
there is a portion of the land once owned by Virginia and 
known to the Shawanee Indians, who dwelt there, as Kain- 
tuck-ee (at the head of the river), which was called the 
Middle Ground, when John Finlay, in 1767, crossed it for 
the first time, and which afterwards obtained the more 
significative name of the Dark and Bloodv Ground. But 



1 88 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

few of us recall the fact that this ill-fated region was reek- 
ing with blood long before the white man ever beheld its 
glorious prairies and noble forests ; that the Indians had 
fought for its rich harvests and abundant hunting-grounds 
for many a generation, and that more than one tribe had 
utterly vanished from the land in the course of these strug- 
gles. Their descendants would come, year after year, long 
after fertile farms and great cities had sprung up on the 
ensanguined plains, to bring their simple offerings to the 
graves of their forefathers, choosing strange out-of-the-way 
paths for their journey, and fearfully shrinking from cer- 
tain well-remembered mounds and darkling pools, where 
the spirits of the departed were said to hover forever. 
After that, however, came another act of the great tragedy, 
when the children of the soil turned with one accord 
against the intruders from the East, and forced the early, 
settlers of Kentucky to fight desperately for their homes 
and their lives. During the whole long period from 1769 
to Wayne's victory on the Maumee, in 1794, blood was 
shed here almost daily. Surrounded by an enemy far out- 
numbering them, animated by deadly hatred and ferocious 
cruelty, wielding the same rifle with the whites, and as 
skilful in its use, these brave pioneers took, nevertheless, 
posssesion of the land, felled forests, laid out roads, built 
towns, and changed the wilderness into a garden. It is 
difficult to measure the greatness of their courage, more 
difficult still to fathom the depth and the weight of that 
darkness in which they worked undaunted and undis- 
mayed. For nearly twenty-five years a cloud of blood- 



LOST TOWNS. 



189 



thirsty Indians was forever hanging around them and dark- 
ening every bright moment of their life. No man could 
open his cabin door in the morning without danger of 
receiving a rifle bullet from a lurking enemy ; no woman 
could go out to milk her cow without the risk of feeling 
the deadly scalping knife on her forehead before she 
returned. Many a man came home from his hunt to find a 
smoking ruin where he had left a happy home, or an empty 
hearth where wife and children had gladdened his heart; 
and gratefully he blessed God, if he found their remains 
and was thus spared the anguish of knowing them to be 
in the hands of incensed brutes. 

Fortunately the work went on bravely and steadily ; 
more and more fearless adventurers came from Virginia. 
James Harrod built, in the Spring of 1774, the first log 
house ever raised for family use in the new territory; 
famous Daniel Boone founded, in 1775, Boonesborough, 
on what he called Cantuck or Otter Creek, and already, in 
1778, the Legislature of Virginia could incorporate the 
town of Louisville, so called in honor of Louis XVI., who 
was then lending his aid to the United States. As the 
cabins multiplied, and towns and villages arose, the red 
men fell back to safer hunting-grounds in the West, and 
soon the prosperity of a new and vigorous State made 
men forget the horrors of the Dark and Bloody Ground 
of Kentucky. 

The same process went on even more speedily in other 
parts of the Union, where similar scenes had led to the 
bestowal of like names. Thus in the upper part of Ohio, 



190 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

also, a mournful region was long known as the Slaughter 
House, since here, for many a returning season, the stern 
Iroquois had met and fought the relentless Massawo- 
mee, a confederacy of Indian tribes dwelling in the coun- 
try that lies on the Upper Ohio. The struggle was fierce, 
and ended in the utter destruction of the weaker party, 
but only after the soil had been inundated with blood, so 
that the Indians themselves had come to call the Ohio the 
Bloody River, and the scene of the terrific conflict was 
known among European settlers as the Dark and Bloody 
Ground of Ohio. Nor are other States without their sad 
memorials of like disastrous calamities. New York points 
with long-cherished grief at her Mohawk Valley, where all 
around Fort Stanwix — now the city of Rome — the cruelty 
of man converted smiling fields and blooming orchards 
into scenes of unutterable woe and wickedness. It was 
now Sir William Johnson, the lord of the great domain, 
who incited his followers and his red allies to bloody 
deeds, and now Joseph Brandt, the Sachem of the 
Mohawks, a regularly commissioned captain in the Brit- 
ish army, who fell with his infuriated savages upon the 
homes of peaceful settlers. But here also peace soon 
returned with healing in its wings, and the Dark and 
Bloody Ground of the Empire State is now unknown 
beyond its narrow limits, and mentioned only in the annals 
of the local historian. Time has not yet had an opportu- 
nity to apply its soothing powers in like manner to the 
Dark and Bloody Ground of Arkansas, where a vast mass 
of ruins, but half hid under the shade of huge forest trees 



LOST TOWNS. 191 

still speaks eloquently of a terrible massacre. Here 
once stood Fort Mann, held by a strong, but careless gar- 
rison ; in a dark, stormy night, an immense war party 
of Pawnees suddenly and silently appeared under its tow- 
ering ramparts ; they scaled the palisades, they found the 
guards asleep, and the morning sun rose upon a scene of 
unspeakable desolation. The murderers had fled silently 
and suddenly, as they had come, and within the fortifica- 
tions all lay still and stark, — not a groan was uttered, not 
a cry was heard, and only staring eyes and scalped skulls 
cried for vengeance to heaven. When the news reached 
the nearest settlements a fearful panic seized upon all ; 
they left the fatal region, and for years after the terrible 
slaughter people spoke only with bated breath of the Dark 
and Bloody Ground on the Arkansas River. 

If in these and similar cases we turn with a feeling of 
great relief from the places which know their former names 
no more, the impression is very different with most of 
the lost towns of our land. The country is still so young 
that ruins impress us painfully, like promising children 
called home in their early bloom ; ivy and kindly mosses 
have hardly had time yet to cover with their green mantle 
the ugly scars and ghastly wounds ; and poetry and legend, 
unknown to our youthful nation, have not yet come to 
weave the gossamer veil of pleasing fancy around the dis- 
mantled tower and the mouldering church. Where all is 
life and action, where a great nation, full of vigor and 
irrepressible energy, is hastening forward in the very rap- 
ture of motion, a ruin looks like a crime, and an aban- 



I92 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

doned town like the work of mysterious, vengeful Fate. 
And yet there is no lack of places in our land that once 
were busy marts and important centres of colonial life, 
where people ate and drank, married and were given in 
marriage, without dreaming of the impending destruction, 
and fancied themselves as secure as the ill-fated people 
of ancient Babylon. If these cities and towns had coun- 
ted their inhabitants by thousands instead of by hundreds, 
or if some great catastrophe had destroyed them in an 
instant, all the world would bewail their ruin, and their 
tragic fate would be sung by the poets of every age. But 
their modest size and scanty population did not hinder 
them from being, in the early times of our existence, of 
vital importance to our New World, as our brave men 
were none the less heroes because they fought in log cab- 
ins instead of defending a Troy or a Carthage, or because 
they battled on an inland lake instead of encountering 
fleets in mid ocean. The very fact that these lost towns 
arose in the wilderness, and that their rise and their fall 
was neither watched by admiring multitudes nor recorded 
by the Muse of History, but adds to the romance of their 
fate, and calls upon us to point them out to every patriot 
and every student of humanity, as worthy of being better 
known and more fully considered. 

Lost towns must naturally be mainly looked for in the 
older parts of our Union, and thus we find the most stri- 
king instance among them all in the Mother of States. 
We approach the New World with the first discoverers, 
whom a formidable storm had driven into Chesapeake 



LOST TOWNS. 193 

Bay, and behold with them " a country," as Captain John 
Smith reported, " that may have the prerogative over the 
most pleasant places knowne, for large and pleasant nav- 
igable Rivers ; heaven and earth never agreed better to 
frame a place for man's habitation." We ascend with 
them the noble river, called by the loyal sailors the King's 
River, in honor of their dread sovereign, and reach, after 
a pleasant sail of some fifty miles, a bold headland, where 
vessels might safely ride in six fathoms of water, and yet 
be moored to trees on the shore. Here the adventurers 
rested, and were so pleased with the beauty of the pros- 
pect, the richness of the black loam and the great conve- 
nience for shipping, that, in the bonny month of May, 
of the year 1607, they determined to build a town on the 
spot, and forthwith named it "James Towne, in honour 
of the king's most excellent Majestic" They spoke of 
the site as an island, for it was surrounded on all sides by 
water, the great river to the South, and a small creek in 
the rear, but after a while it became a peninsula by the 
filling up of the back country, till in quite recent times 
neglect and high floods have once more deepened the 
water courses inland, and the place is an island again, as 
when it was first chosen to hold the second town ever 
built on this continent. Towns, however, were of slow 
growth in Virginia, and for many a year the little fort, 
with the few log huts around it, had a sore struggle for 
mere existence. Now wily Indians would come and 
attempt to burn it to the ground in order to drive the irre- 
sistible invaders out of their land, and now treacherous 
r 3 



194 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

colonists themselves would attempt its destruction for pur- 
poses of private revenge or iniquitous plunder. John 
Smith tried in vain to control the restless spirits of use- 
less gentlemen, and the idle hands of worthless criminals, 
who formed the majority of early settlers, but thanks to 
his marvellous tact and great personal influence, a youth- 
ful princess, " the Emperour's dearest daughter," would 
appear, like a beneficent fairy, whenever treason was ripe 
and threatened ruin to the infant colony, or waste and 
recklessness had produced a famine, and starvation was 
near at hand with all its horrors. As new immigrants 
came to fill up the land, and ambitious men began to 
covet colonial honors, the little town grew apace in size 
and importance, till, in the year 1619, the first Assembly 
ever held in Virginia could be convened in " James 
Citty " by Sir George Yeardley, Governor of the Colony. 
But even then already the good people of Virginia began 
to show in their ancient town the striking difference in 
character and mode of life, which marks them as distinct 
from their Puritan neighbors at the North. In the early 
days of Boston, we learn from a quaint old author, the 
Maine Law was curiously but clearly foreshadowed by 
its watchful authorities. In the year 1638, when the city 
boasted as yet of only twenty or thirty houses and two 
inns, Josselyn visited it, and was struck by the following 
custom. " An officer," he says, " visits the inns when a 
stranger goes into them, and if he calls for more drink 
than the officer thinks in his judgment he can soberly 
bear away, he countermands it, and appoints the propor- 



LOST TOWNS. 195 

tion, beyond which he cannot get a drop." (Voyages, p. 
173.) Jamestown, on the contrary, is described by the 
attractive author of the Westover MSS. (p. 3), as being 
about the same time a place " where, like true Englishmen, 
they built a Church, that cost no more than fifty pounds, 
and a tavern that cost five hundred." In the meanwhile 
trials and tribulations of every kind had fallen upon the 
unfortunate place, and in 1622, after the terrible massa- 
cre, in which nearly every Englishman, who dwelt not 
within the few fortified places, had been butchered by the 
incensed Indians, the town was actually abandoned by the 
terrified colonists. They even proposed to burn their 
deserted houses, and embarked for their homeward jour- 
ney ; fortunately they were met, while yet in the river, by 
some English vessels that brought supplies and reinforce- 
ments, and thus Virginia was not forsaken, and Jamestown, 
for a time at least, was saved. But the place would not 
grow in spite of all the natural advantages it offered, and 
the tempting inducements that were held out by the autho- 
rities. As late as 1662 a special Act of the Assembly was 
passed " That a towne be built at James Citty, as being 
the most convenient place on James River." (Henning's 
Statutes, II. p. 172). The end, however, was drawing near. 
Not many years afterwards Bacon's rebellion broke out. 
The unlucky Governor, Sir William Berkeley, utterly un- 
able to cope with the talented and energetic rebel, was 
besieged in his capital and forced to flee for his life. 
When Bacon marched into the town, he found nothing but 
empty houses ; everything that could be useful to the 



196 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

insurgents had either been carried away or sunk in the 
river, and the disappointment of the men was as great as 
that of their leader. He determined at once that the 
place, which could not be retained by himself, since it was 
incapable of defence against regular approaches, should at 
least not be a harbor and refuge for his enemies. He 
explained his resolution to his enthusiastic followers, who 
approved it by loud shouts and joyous acclamations. Fire- 
brands and combustibles of every kind were at once pre- 
pared • Bacon himself set the example, his lieutenants, 
Lawrence and Drummond, did not hesitate to set fire to 
their own houses, by far the most valuable in the town, 
and in a few minutes the church, the State house and all 
the other buildings were wrapped in a sudden and gen- 
eral conflagration. Thus ended James City, henceforth 
under the more familiar name of Jamestown, to remain one 
of our Lost Towns. A ruined tower, half overgrown with 
ivy, a few memorial stones in the graveyard which sur- 
rounded the church, hid under a dense growth of weeds 
and wild shrubs, and a melancholy pile of bricks, where 
once a tall chimney rose, gathering round its ruddy fire 
the brave colonists as they rested from their day's weary 
work, and loved to recall the friends and the joys of their 
sweet homes across the waters — these are all that remains 
now of the ancient town, once so memorable in the history 
of our country. No trace is left of the grave of Bartholo- 
mew Gosnold, the fearless sailor, who first of all brought 
his little bark across the wide ocean to sail up a noble 
river into a New World, and who died here, a victim of 



LOST TOWNS. I97 

the climate and incessant labor, upon which " he was 
honorably buried, having all the ordnance in the fort shot 
off, with many vollies of small arms." (Purchas, IV. 1690.) 
No trace of the gallant Smith, first so grievously ill-treated, 
then worshipped with blind idolatry by the Indians, and 
finally lost to sight in an unknown grave, who here had 
told night after night his marvellous adventures of 
romance, while cheering the faint, intimidating the trai- 
tors, and painfully building up the infant colony. No 
trace of the English vessels that had here discharged, in 
1619, a cargo well calculated to ruin a rising country, and 
more honorable to Virginia in its defeated evil influences 
than her most illustrious assassins from abroad. For in 
that year there had been landed on the tiny wharf of the 
half-starved town one hundred dissolute persons sent 
over " at express command of His Majesty, delivered by 
his Marshall," to be sold as servants, and, as if this were 
not poison enough to vitiate the feeble new settlement, 
these criminals had been accompanied by a hundred so- 
called Virgins, " sent over at the instance of the Treasu- 
rer (of the Company) for the purpose of fixing to the soil 
the roving and inconstant spirits of the colonists !" No 
trace of Pocahontas, the " king's sweet little child," who 
had sported here in childish innocence, listening at times 
to the strange foreigners' fearful tales, and saving, at other 
times again and again, the enemies of her race, at the peril 
of her own life, from imminent death and dire starvation. 
Here she had heard — the first child of the soil to whom the 
glad tidings of salvation were brought — the sweet words 



I98 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

of the minister, Mr. Hunt, of whom it is recorded that 
when his little church, the first in all Virginia, was burnt 
down, together with his house, and he lost his books and 
everything but the clothes he wore, " yet none ever saw 
him repine at his loss." Surely, there is no spot in all 
America more brilliantly illumined by the splendor of 
romance, more strikingly illustrated by daring deeds, or 
more thoroughly sanctified by heroic suffering, than this 
little borough on the River James, and yet a crumbling 
ruin, soon to be seen no more, is all that now marks the 
place of the Lost Town. 

There is something indescribably ludicrous in the inde- 
fatigable efforts which were uiade by Virginia to build up 
towns ; for in vain were ample rewards offered to German 
workmen and Dutch laborers, who would assist in build- 
ing houses and forming communities ; in vain did noble- 
men abroad and governors in the colony promise large 
sums of money to persons disposed to live within the well- 
fortified places j in vain did even the Assembly of the 
Colony, by Acts and Proclamations, endeavor to encour- 
age "Cohabitation" — as it was then quaintly called. 
Virginians have ever preferred a country life to town life, 
and the multitude of rivers and creeks, which form a vast 
network over the country, gave them from the beginning 
such abundant and easy means of sending their produce 
to market, that the usual inducements for congregating in 
towns were here almost entirely wanting. The difficulty 
of the task seems, however, but to have stimulated its 
advocates and patrons to ever new exertions, and it is 



LOST TOWNS. I99 

almost touching to notice the perseverance with which 
effort after effort was made — and made in vain. 

One of the earliest enterprises of this kind dates back 
as far as the year 161 1, when Sir Thomas Dale was 
appointed High Marshal of Virginia and immediately 
took measures to carry out his favorite project, the build- 
ing of a town. The Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, was 
quite willing to encourage his plans, and furnished him, in 
his official capacity, with three hundred and fifty chosen 
men, the majority of whom were German workmen. With 
this motley crowd the Marshal sailed up the King's River, 
exploring turn after turn, and discovering everywhere new 
beauties and new wealth, till he finally reached, in the 
month of August, the place where the impetuous stream 
falls over a number of rocky ledges, and navigation is at 
an end. Dropping down again some little distance he 
chose a place on what was afterwards called Taerar's 
Island, from the name of the man who bought it after the 
fearful massacre of 1622, and where the river makes the 
so-called Great Bend, performing a circuit of nearly seven 
miles, while the neck of land thus encircled is but a hun- 
dred and twenty yards across. It is one of the most 
curious features in the history of Virginia, and yet char- 
acteristic of many of her best enterprises, that here, at 
that remote time, a work was begun which was completed 
only in our own day. For these German settlers were, 
not long afterwards, employed to cut through this neck of 
land, for the purpose of straightening the course of the 
river, and thus shortening navigation. They were not 



200 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

allowed, however, to complete the work, which became 
popularly known as the Dutch Gap, so that it was left to 
a certain General Butler to continue the effort during the 
civil war, and to the impoverished State of Virginia to 
accomplish at last, in 187 1, the work begun so long ago. 
It was near this place that Sir Thomas Dale determined 
to build his town, and he set to work at once, with his 
usual energy. " His new towne, within ten or twelve daies 
he had invironed it with a pale, and in honor of our noble 
Prince Henry, called it Henriopolis," says the chronicler 
of those days. The " pale " was a palisade, which ran 
from river to river, and formed a strong protection against 
the hostile Indians, and within its shelter there arose 
promptly a church and a storehouse. Gradually addi- 
tions were made, till the place could boast of three streets 
of well-framed houses, while on the outskirts five forts, or 
watch-towers, had beep erected, quaintly named Patience 
and Charity, Elizabeth and Mary, and Mount Malady, a 
'' guest-house for sick people," on a high and dry place, 
with a beautiful view over the river and the surrounding 
landscape. Nor was the ministry forgotten, and Rock 
Hall, the spacious parsonage of the Rev. Mr. Whi taker, 
with its tall gables and ample glebe, spoke well for the 
esteem in which he and his office were held by the Mar- 
shal and his adherents. Friendly relations were estab- 
lished with the neighboring Indians, who soon learnt to 
appreciate the kindly feelings of the new master, and to 
dread his revenge whenever they attempted to injure his 
followers. As the town extended, its name contracted, 



LOST TOWNS. 20 1 

and it became soon known as Henrico simply, but pros- 
pered so well, that when Sir Thomas Dale returned, in 
1616, to England, Jamestown, Bermuda and Henrico con- 
stituted the whole of Virginia. A few years later efficient 
measures were taken to add increased importance to the 
place by making it the centre of all efforts in behalf of 
the conversion of the Indians. So well did the first set- 
tlers of the Old Dominion understand the peremptory 
duty that, following the noble example of Sir W. Ral- 
eigh, who, in 1588, had given ,£100 for the propagation 
of Christianity in Virginia, they ordered, in 1619, steps 
to be taken " for educating infidel children in the knowl- 
edge of the true God," and the sum of £1,500 was 
appropriated for the purpose, together with a tract of 
valuable land. The news of these proceedings seem to 
have created everywhere an enthusiastic interest in behalf 
of Henrico College, as it was first called, and when Sir 
Edwin Sandys obtained from the Company in England 
the magnificent gift of a hundred thousand acres, lying 
between Henrico and the present City of Richmond, it 
was insisted upon that it should at once be called the 
University of Henrico — a tendency to magnify a Gram- 
mar School into a University, not extinct even in our day. 
The main purpose of the new institution was to serve " as 
a College for the education of Indians," although it was 
also to " lay the foundation of a seminary of learning for 
the English." Contributions came in from all sides. The 
following year an unknown person sent five hundred 
pounds " for the maintenance of a convenient number of 



202 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 

young Indians, from seven or under to twelve years of 
age, to be instructed in writing and the principles of the 
Christian religion, and then to be trained up in some 
lawful trade, with all gentleness and humanity, till they 
attained the age of twenty-one ; and after that, to have 
and enjoy the like liberties and privileges with the native 
English in Virginia." A Mr. Farrar likewise bequeathed 
a large sum, and twenty-four pounds annually, for the 
same purpose of " concerting Infidel children ; " and when 
afterwards an East India School was erected in the neigh- 
borhood, to be subject and preparatory to Henrico Col- 
lege for Indians exclusively, under the Rev. Mr. Copland, 
Chaplain to the East India Company, an unknown per- 
son sent a very large sum to the treasurer, signing him- 
self with quaint humility, " Dust and Ashes." How nobly 
these acts and the accompanying sentiments contrast with 
the views entertained at a later period by the leading men 
of the same colony ! Now, all was tenderness and heart- 
felt interest in the earthly welfare and the eternal salva- 
tion of the poor natives, and due consideration was given to 
the claims of education and general enlightenment. After- 
wards, Sir William Berkeley, whom high authority desig- 
nates as "a worthy, good and just man," could soberly 
conclude his official report to the Lords of Commerce 
with these words : " I thank God there are no free schools, 
nor printing (in Virginia), and I hope we shall not have 
these hundred years. For learning has brought disobe- 
dience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing 
has divulged them and libels against the best government. 



LOST TOWNS. 203 

God keep us from both." Lord Effingham, Governor of 
Virginia in 1683, in the same spirit ordered to "allow no 
person to use a printing press on any occasion whatever," 
and Lord Howard of Effingham, who was Governor in 
1684, actually taxed schoolmasters twenty shillings a 
head ! 

Superstitious people, who then saw the wrath of God 
in every public calamity, as they now see the workings of 
Providence in every accident by land or by water, failed 
not to ascribe the sudden and tragic end of all these 
efforts at " cohabitation," at enlightenment among the 
settlers, and conversion among the natives, to reasons 
closely resembling the views of the two governors. On 
that unfortunate day of sorrow, the 22d of March, 1622, 
every English life outside of Jamestown, and a few settle- 
ments nearer the coast, was taken by the Indians, and one 
vast massacre filled the colony with terror, and brought 
desolation to thousands of happy homes in England. 
Henrico was utterly destroyed, only a few fragments of 
the church, and of one house, remaining standing, and the 
whole country seemed to have received its death-blow. 
In the following year, Captain John Smith says : " So 
much scorned was the name of Virginia, some did chuse 
to be hanged ere they would goe thither, and they were." 
Town, school and university all have disappeared with- 
out leaving a trace of their former greatness behind them, 
and here, as in Jamestown, an ivy-mantled ruin is all that 
remains of the Lost Town. 

Observant travellers have often been struck with the 



204 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

beauty of the positions on which the early churches and 
convents of the Old World have been almost without ex- 
ception erected. A similar instinct seems to have guided 
the first settlers in this country also, for nothing can sur- 
pass the magnificence of the view and the exquisite splen- 
dor of the landscape, afforded by places like Roanoke, in 
North Carolina, and Jamestown, in Virginia. The same 
attractions surround the most memorable Lost Town in 
the neighboring State of Maryland, where Leonard Cal- 
vert, in the month of February, 1634, wisely chose a site 
for the future capital of the Land of the Sanctuary. He 
had been sent over by his elder brother, Lord Baltamore, 
(for so the name was written in those days), the head of 
an ancient and noble house, originally from Flanders, and 
now the proprietor of a new grant of land, where he hoped 
to find larger rewards and greater comfort than in his 
bleak and barren dominion of Avalon, in Newfoundland. 
Sailing in the Ark and Dove — names suggestive of the 
peace among men it was proposed to establish in the New 
Colony — he had landed at Point Comfort, in Virginia, 
when he was, according to special instructions from home, 
received by the Governor with " courtesy and humanity," 
and had then sailed up the magnificent bay, known to the 
Indians as the Great Water or Mother of Waters (Chesa- 
peake) and so called by Purchas (IV., 1646), while very 
old Spanish maps also designate it as Madre de Aguas. 
Soon the adventurers came to a place where the Potomac 
was over two miles broad, and a noble headland rose on 
the Northern bank, affording a magnificent view over the 



LOST TOWNS. 205 

bay, and the smiling plains of the inland country. An 
Indian village crowned the point, called Yeocomoco, and 
here they were heartily welcomed by the natives, who 
hoped to find in the new-comers friendly allies in their 
struggle against the hostile Susquehannas. At the head 
of a river, called by Calvert St. George's River, and upon 
the highest table-land, the foundation was laid for the 
coming city. Father White, Calvert's Chaplain, assisted 
by his Jesuit brethren, planted his cross there, and said 
mass ; then an imposing procession was formed, the lit- 
any of the cross chanted, and the ground solemnly chris- 
tened with bell, book and candle. New names were 
bestowed upon land and water all around. The Heron 
Islands in the Potomac became St. Clement's, St. Catha- 
rine and St. Cecilia, and one of the bays, further inland, 
was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The same 
name of St. Mary's was bestowed upon the town that was 
to be the capital of the new colony, and the thirty miles 
of territory immediately around the place, which had been 
faithfully purchased from the natives, received the name of 
Augusta Carolina, in honor of the reigning king, Charles I. 
As to the colony itself, a difficulty seems to have arisen 
here, strangely resembling the trouble which arose in 
connection with the naming of the neighboring province. 
There William Penn had been most anxious to secure to 
his magnificent purchase the title of New Wales, c ' being/' 
as he said, " as this a pretty hilly country," and had 
employed humble petitions and direct appeals, nay, had 
even resorted to bribes, to accomplish his purpose, but all 



206 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

in vain. The king insisted upon calling it after Penn, the 
Admiral, and Pennsylvania, the " Holy Experiment," 
became in spite of the owner. So it was here, also, the 
Cal verts wished to call the new country Crescentia, but 
Charles, in his charter, directed it to be called Terra 
Mariae, in honor of his queen, the daughter of Henry IV. 
of France, and thus it became Maryland. The pious 
priests were not indisposed to encourage a belief that the 
true sponsor was not an earthly sovereign, but the Queen 
of Heaven herself, and were, themselves, apt to call the 
colony the " Land of the Sanctuary," because it was the 
only home which religious liberty then had in the world. 

The new town of St. Mary's soon rose to hopeful 
dimensions ; a handsome church was erected, according 
to a design prepared by the great Inigo Jones himself ; 
an imposing State House gave dignity to the capital, and 
comfortable dwelling-houses, built mostly of materials 
imported from the "home country," began to cluster 
around the stately buildings. Fort Point was thrown up 
on the right hand to protect the infant colony, and every- 
thing seemed to be prosperous and bright. An enthusi- 
astic admirer of the new province, himself an early emi- 
grant, J. Alsop, could write boastingly : "Let him look on 
Maryland with eyes admiring and he will then judge her 
The Miracle of His Age ;" and add in another place : 
" Any one who desires to see the Landskip of the Crea- 
tion drawn to the life, should see Mary-Land Nest in her 
green and fragrant mantle of spring." But slow, secret 
decay seems to have undermined the holy city from the 



LOST TOWNS. 207 

beginning, though history is silent as to the true reasons 
for its speedy downfall. Without any apparent cause in 
climate or convenience, without any great public calamity, 
such as befell Jamestown, in the neighboring State, St. 
Mary's began to decline in spite of the lavish expenditure 
which the church and the pious proprietor seemed to be 
willing at all times to bestow upon their favorite city. In 
the year 1683 the seat of government, together with the 
courts and public offices, were ordered to be removed, and 
the poor town was doomed to an early death. The same 
mystery which envelops its fate seems to hang around the 
measures taken for the removal of the capital. There was 
evidently no fixed plan or purpose in the movement — the 
one thought of leaving St. Mary's being apparently the 
only well-known intention of all who were interested. So 
they went first to a wretched place, known as The Ridge, 
in a county called Ann Arundel, from Anna, the daughter 
of the Earl of Arundel, one of the most eminent among 
the Catholic peers of England, and the wife of Cecil Cal- 
vert, the second Lord Baltimore. From here the Legis- 
lature travelled to Battle Creek, on the Patuxent River, 
but finding the accommodations so insufficient that inns 
and school-houses had to be rented for the meetings of the 
Assembly, they once more returned to St. Mary's, and 
remained there till the year of the Protestant revolution. 
In 1692 the General Assembly met for the special purpose 
of recognizing the new sovereign, and at the same time 
made the Church of England the Church of Maryland, 
depriving the Catholics, the founders and faithful patrons 



208 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

of the colony of the right to hold office ! With the su- 
premacy of the old religion expired also the prestige of- 
the old capital. The seat of government was now perma- 
nently transferred to a point of land at the mouth of the 
Severn, which was known as the Town Land of Severn, 
though popularly called Proctor's, from the name of the 
owner. In 1694 the place was made a port of entry, with 
a naval officer and a collector of customs, and received 
first the name of Ann Arundel Town, and later (in 1703) 
of Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. For a time the 
fatality that had so seriously injured St. Mary's seems to 
have pursued the new capital also, for even after many 
years of apparent prosperity, and in spite of ample grants 
and privileges, which had been bestowed upon the new 
favorite, it was in 17 18 described as 

" A city situate on a plain 
Where scarce a house will keep out the rain ; 
The buildings framed, with cypress rare, 
Resemble much our Southwark Fair — 
And if the truth I may report, 
It's not so large as Tottenham Court." 
(The Sotweed Factor, poem by G. Cook, Gent., 1711.) 

In the meantime poor St. Mary's was speedily decaying ; 
the public buildings were left unprotected, private houses 
were abandoned, and all went to wreck and ruin. From 
time to time spasmodic efforts were made to infuse new 
life into the dying town ; but the very measures taken for 
the purpose bore in them the seed of failure : the bricks 
of the State House, erected for the special protection and 
benefit of Catholics, were used to build a Protestant 



LOST TOWNS. 209 

church, the yard around was converted into a graveyard, 
and close to the former chapel a female seminary was 
established by means of a State lottery ! No wonder, 
therefore, that St. Mary's also has disappeared, without 
leaving a trace of its former importance behind it, and 
belongs now to our Lost Towns, appealing to our sympa- 
thies by its melancholy fate and romantic interest. Like 
their favorite town the race of the Baltimores also has 
been extinct for a century, the last Lord of that name 
closing a sad life as a worn-out old man at forty, in Italy, 
and leaving no child by his wife Diana, daughter of the 
Duke of Buckingham. The Calverts also continued only 
through a natural son of the fifth Lord Baltimore ; but the 
noble aspirations and liberal views of the ancient race 
have not become extinct in their descendants, nor have 
they been forgotten by those who admire pure virtue, and 
appreciate the rare merit of religious toleration. 

Far down in the southernmost part of our early colo- 
nies there rises on the coast a vast mound, standing up 
solemn and solitary on the yellow sands, and looking like 
a weird beacon over. the green sea before it and the beau- 
tiful country in the rear. Here, tradition says, a great 
Indian chief rests from his labors, who had on this spot 
met Sir Walter Raleigh, when he went on shore to ex- 
plore the New World he had discovered. The Indian 
was so deeply impressed with the sweet gentleness and 
the grave dignity of the great sailor that he insisted upon 
being buried "where he had talked with that great, good 
man." So, at least, other Indians belonging to the sixth 
14 



21 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

or seventh generation after the days of Raleigh, told ano- 
ther truly great and good man, as he stood on a fair spring 
morning near that memorable mound, and looked around 
upon the fair landscape, which he hoped soon to make a 
"home of the poor and the oppressed." Fifteen years 
before he reached these shores, that territory had already 
been granted by the " Palatine and Lords Proprietors of 
Carolina " to Sir Robert Montgomery, Bart, under the 
name of the Margravate of Azilia ; but no effort had been 
made to colonize the land, and there was an open field for 
the great benefactor in which to carry out the noble plan 
referred to by the poet of the Seasons in the lines 

" O great design ! if executed well, 
With patient care and wisdom — tempered zeal !" 

The new owner was General Oglethorpe, who, in the year 

1732, had obtained from the King the grant of a noble 

domain, lying between the Savannah and the Alatamahah 

Rivers, and intended to be held by him " in trust for the 

poor." He had been the leader of 

— " the generous band 
Who, touch'd with human woe, redressive search'd 
Into the horrors of the gloomy gaol, 
U.ipitied and Unheard, where Misery moans, 
Where Sickness pines, where Thirst and Hunger burn 
And poor Misfortune feels the lash of Vice," 

and gathering around him a melancholy band of insolvent 

debtors, helpless orphans, and persecuted foreigners, he 

had embarked for the distant shores of the land which in 

honor of the monarch had been called Georgia Augusta. 

Here, on a noble river called Shewano by the Indians 

who dwelt on its banks, and who formed one ofthe twenty- 



LOST TOWNS. 211 

eight tribes that were found in Carolina when the first 
whites settled on the Ashley, in a tent erected under 
the shelter of four beautiful pines, the old soldier had, on 
the first of February, 1733, begun to lay out the squares 
and streets of a noble city, and thus laid the foundation 
for the new commonwealth of Georgia. He was aided in 
his great work by strange friends and neighbors. Guided 
in his voyage across the ocean and in his first wanderings 
along the coast of the new province by the manuscript 
Journal of Sir W. Raleigh, he had now by his side the 
chief of the most recent colonies of the New World, Colo- 
nel Bull, of Carolina ; at another time George Whitfield, 
the gifted preacher, was his secretary and zealous assist- 
ant, while Attakulla-kulla, the Great Conjuror, a noble 
Cherokee Sachem, who had been to England, aided him 
in his intercourse with the natives. 

As the new colony expanded, new settlements were 
made, and among these he loved best the town of his 
choice, on St. Simon's Island, where a little cottage, a 
garden, and an orchard of oranges, figs and grapes, of 
about fifty acres, formed the homestead of the illustrious 
founder of a State, and constituted all the property he 
ever owned on this continent. On a high bluff command- 
ing the mouth of the river Alatamahah, which here swells 
out into a large bay, Oglethorpe built in 1736, a fort with 
four regular bastions, and mounted guns ; and under the 
shelter of this fastness nestled soon a thriving town, which 
he called Frederica, in honor of the eldest son of George 
II. This was the same unfortunate prince who died before 



212 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

his father, after giving his name also to the city of Frede- 
ricksburg, and to Frederick County in Virginia. The new 
town, according to the general's peculiar views already 
shown in the plan of Savannah, was regularly laid out ; 
but the houses were either palmetto-cabins, mere " bowers 
and tents," as he loved to call them, or built of tabby, a 
composition of oyster-shells and lime. The little hamlet 
grew apace, until it could count more than a thousand 
inhabitants, and was full of life and commerce. The 
importation of rum and the holding of slaves had both 
been prohibited by the original charter, but vessels came 
soon to the safe harbor with commodities of all kinds ; 
they also brought new settlers, now a band of Protestant 
refugees from Salzburg, who went up to their town of Ebe- 
nezer, and now Gaelic mountaineers, who built New Inver- 
ness, a genuine Castle Dangerous, on the Spanish fron- 
tier, " where wild Altama murmured to their woe." Here 
the delighted old soldier loved to sit and watch the growth 
of his colony, and from hence he sailed up the river to the 
dark forests, filled with Indians, or down the bay to the 
places on the sea-shore, described as "covered with myr- 
tle, peach trees, orange trees and vines, in the wild woods." 
He protected his favorite Frederica still further by out- 
lying forts, like those on Amelia Sound, so called after the 
queen, " out of gratitude to the king," and on Cumberland 
Island, the naming of which was due to an Indian. For 
as the general stood on its virgin soil, and the question 
arose how it was to be christened, a tall, stalwart Indian 
by his side, Toonakowi, the nephew of the famous Torno- 



LOST TOWNS. 213 

Chichi, drew out a gold repeater, which the Duke of Cum- 
berland had given him when he was in England. " The 
Duke," he said, il gave us this watch that we might know 
how time went ; we will at all times remember him," and 
then with true, in-bred courtesy, proposed to General 
Oglethorpe to call the island after the duke, which was 
done on the instant. The same prince gave his name, 
after the battle of Culloden, to Cumberland County, the 
first county created in the colony. 

A strange, sad fatality seems here also to have attached 
itself to the first efforts of the new colony. General Ogle- 
thorpe was not rewarded on earth for his noble and unsel- 
fish labors. He saw rum forced upon his plantations, and 
slavery introduced in spite of his earnest remonstrances ; 
Whitfield's mission failed, his orphan house fell to ruins, 
and his character was seriously endangered. The towns 
were alike unfortunate : Savannah was moved from Yam- 
acraw Bluff, where it had first been laid out, down the 
river to its present site ; Ebenezer, the new home of the 
Salzburgers, was abandoned by them for unexplained 
reasons, and ere the old warrior had completed his life 
of nearly a century, his own town of Frederica had ceased 
to exist. A few ruins, overgrown with hoary moss, and 
ivy, a tall painted post here and there, and a silver coin 
found at times by chance visitors to the spot, are all that 
now speak of the once prosjDerous, promising town. A 
poor little hamlet near by still bears the name, but Fred- 
erica itself is no more ; its time-honored name must be 
added to the list of our Lost Towns. 



214 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

" Bright were the days at Merry Mount, when the 
May-pole was the banner-staff of that gay colony," says 
Hawthorne, in one of his admirable Twice-Told Tales, 
and then goes on, weaving a few historic threads into a 
brilliant tissue of sparkling fancies, darkened and torn to 
shreds finally, after his manner, by the black shadows of 
some of his ancestors. Most readers follow him willingly 
— as who would not — in his bright fanciful wanderings, 
little suspecting that they read, after all, but a page from 
the grave annals of New England. For the gay crowd 
of merry-makers around the May-pole of Merry Mount 
consisted not merely of children of the poet's creative 
fancy : they really lived and revelled in reckless dissipa- 
tion at Mount Wollaston, called so after a parish of that 
name in Old England. The place seems to have been 
haunted by weird visions from time immemorial, for the 
Indians already knew it as Pasonagesite, and had strange, 
sad stories to tell of the Manitous which appeared there 
to fanatic medicine-men and credulous maidens. Nor was 
the charm broken by the stern faith of the first English 
settlers : for years fearful tales were recited at even, when 
the doors had been fastened ; the sword lay ready for the 
quick hand, and old and young gathered around the ruddy 
glow of the fire. It had received a new name now, and in 
cautious whispers and careful words Ma-re Mountain in 
New Canaan was spoken of as the place of the abomina- 
tion of desolation. But the horror grew and the wrath 
increased when Morton, the reckless Englishman, formed 
a settlement on the ill-reputed place, and dared call it his 



LOST TOWNS. 2K 

"cheery towne of Merry Mount." He had gathered a 
motley crowd around him of broken-down gentlemen, 
tramps and vagabonds, idle and pleasure-loving appren- 
tices, in fact all who could not endure the stern discipline 
and unbearable monotony of Puritan life. How they sup- 
ported themselves, and how they supplied their wants not 
only, but their luxuries even, has remained a mystery to 
this day ; but there they were, rollicking, rioting fellows, 
who boasted that they were reviving and keeping up the 
ancient revels " in a solemne manner and merriment after 
the olde English custome." They continued their dan- 
cing and drinking, enjoyed their May-poles and merry 
games till the patience of the " Seperatists," as they are 
called by the chroniclers of those days, was exhausted, 
and they went forth, in holy wrath, to drive these sons of 
Belial from their mountain fastness. The terrible Endi- 
cott himself, who cut o.ut the cross of St. George from the 
royal standard, and forced women to appear veiled in pub- 
lic assemblies, who smote the Pequots hip and thigh, and 
caused four Quakers to be put to death for their " abomi- 
nable trembling and quaking," marched at the head of a 
troop of armed men against the forsaken sinners. The 
revellers were disgracefully defeated, and sent to the Puri- 
tans May-pole, the whipping-post; Morton, the leader, 
was loaded with chains and dispatched to England, there 
to stand his trial, and the poor town of Merry Mount des- 
troyed, a lost town in the annals of America, and lost, 
alas ! also in eternity, according to the terrible views of 
its captors. 




LOST LANDS. 

vn, 

HE traveller through Somerset Coun- 
1 y ty in England, sees, if he is coming 
from Bath, and faces the setting sun, 
the glowing light suddenly shut out 
from his vision by a strange, solitary 
eminence, which rises abruptly from low flats and monoto- 
nous marshes. On the summit he beholds, clearly defined 
against the Western sky, tall spires, square towers, and 
grand old ruins with ragged outlines by the side of mas- 
sive buildings, and lofty, oddly-shaped roofs. The whole 
looks as if it had once been enclosed by a high wall, and 
under the shelter of ancient convent and church, nestles a 
sleepy old town. He recognizes one of the great homes 
of miracles for which Great Britain was famous in olden 
days, and will not fail to look for the far-famed chapel 
which Joseph of Arimathea built here for the Britons, 
whom his zeal and supernatural power had promptly con- 
verted. But he may not recall that ancient Glassenbury, 
as Oldmixon spelt it in 1740, now Glastonbury, was still 
better known among our forefathers as Avalon, the Sacred 
Island. In ancient days that name had been given to the 



LOST LANDS. 217 

Island of the Blessed, well-known to Celtic mythology, 
and dear to all lovers of fairy-land, for there was the 
true home of the fairies. How it was subsequently trans- 
ferred to Glastonbury, an island only so far as it lies 
amid marshes and in the embrace of the river Brue, wc 
know not, but its sanctity was early established and long 
maintained. The miraculous thorn of St. Joseph, which 
bloomed every Christmas day, the shrine of St. Dunstan, 
and the tomb of King Arthur, combined with a health- 
giving spring of supernatural power to keep up the charm 
and to attract every year ten thousands of pious visitors, 
who sought relief from disease, assistance from saints, or 
peace to troubled consciences at the holy shrines of old 
Avalon. 

The word seemed to have a magic charm for all 
nations and all ages, for centuries after the great abbey 
had been built at Glastonbury, in 605, on the ruins of a 
British church, we find that Avalon had become the name 
of an island in the great ocean, " not far on this side of 
the terrestial paradise." In the centre stood a stately 
castle with a quaint treasure — a loadstone of irresistible 
power, which straightways drew all that came within its 
reach into the charmed circle. Here dwelt King Arthur 
and the great Oberon with Morgue la Faye, as all may 
read who love old French romances like Ogier le Danois, 
which contains a minute description of the enchanted 
island. 

For the first time in the history of the Old World, a 
fairy tale was turned into a reality, and a land that had so 



2l8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

long existed only in the fancy of pious enthusiasts or 
inspired poets was actually located on an Orbis Pictus, 
when, in 1628, Sir George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, 
gave the name of Avalon — in grateful memory of Glaston- 
bury — to a portion of our continent. Standing high in the 
favor of his sovereign, whom he had long and faithfully 
served in various posts of honor, he received upon retir- 
ing from public life, among other rich gifts, a grant of that 
part of Newfoundland which " lies between the Bay of 
Bulls on the coast thereof and the Cape St. Mary's on the 
South." This was erected into a province, of which he 
became sole proprietor, and here he proposed to estab- 
lish an asylum for persecuted Catholics. Thus arose on 
our north-eastern coast the long forgotten Province of 
Avalon. He went to reside there himself, built mansions 
and cottages, established fisheries and farms, and lavishly 
spent his fortune in trying to make it a fit habitation for 
men, and a happy home for his fellow-believers. But the 
sterile, ice-bound land refused all return ; it seemed to be 
utterly unfit for cultivation, and after a few years' trial the 
owner turned his face towards the sunny South, and the 
world knew the short-lived Avalon no more. His suc- 
cessor, Cecil, nevertheless, kept the title, and his portrait 
appears with the inscription : Effigies absoluti Domini Pro- 
vinciarum Terrae Mariae et Avaloniae ; but with him the 
title and the province both came to an end, and the lat- 
ter is now, in American history, a forgotten land. 

Was fabulous Avalon, which no doubt ceased to exist 
because fairies could not live amid perpetual snow and 



LOST LANDS. 219 

ice, the same as Norimbegua, the Meta Incognita of our 
forefathers ? Who can tell ? They have both had their 
day, when they formed the subject of courtly ambition and 
lordly grants, and they have both passed away, without 
leaving a trace on the maps of the world and in the mem- 
ory of nations. The name Norimbegua occurs first, like 
Avalon, in connection with a purely imaginary country, 
lying somewhere between Nova Scotia on the North, and 
New England on the South. Here, it was believed, there 
dwelt once a strange nation of hoary antiquity, of weird 
appearance and awe-inspiring worship, who had built a 
great city, filled with inexhaustible treasures. Ogilby 
even speaks of the ruins of the city having been seen by 
bold sea-faring men of his time, who landed on the shores 
of the unknown country. Oldmixon — not always very re- 
liable authority — speaks of "all the continent from South 
Virginia being, by the old Geographers, called Norim- 
begua," (America, I. p. 41), but applies the name, in his 
own account, to certain lands lying in New England, near 
Casco Bay. Gradually the strange word attracted the 
attention of learned men, and most subtle and ingenious 
explanations were given. Some contended for the Indian 
origin, and believed it to be the name borne by the 
ancient owners ; others referred it back to the early Nor- 
wegian discoverers, who might easily have Latinized 
" Norge " into Norimbegua ; while still others went so far 
as to suggest a colony of adventurous Germans from 
Nuremberg, who might in like manner have called the 
new country after their home in the fatherland. Purchas 



220 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

is the first to designate the locality more accurately by 
saying that " Pemptegoete is the place so famous under 
the name of Norimbega" (1632). This brings it once 
more close to New England, since " Pemptegeovett " is 
the first name given to the river Penobscot. 

It is not a little curious that the mystery was by no 
means solved, but on the contrary made only deeper and 
darker, when the unknown land was solemnly erected into 
a grand vice- royalty, and generously bestowed upon a dis- 
tinguished nobleman. This was in the days when brave 
Jacques Carrier's discovery of the St. Lawrence had filled 
the sea-faring world with wondrous tales of a river sur- 
passing all the streams of Europe in grandeur, and water- 
ing a country as large and as beautiful as fair France her- 
self. English and French adventurers of high rank and 
noble birth vied with each other in efforts to secure the 
enchanted regions of the New World for their own 
sovereigns, and France, especially, encouraged by her 
first great success on our Continent, was eager to beat her 
rival in the race. When, therefore, a bold and sagacious 
nobleman of Picardie, Francois de la Roque, Lord of 
Roberval, came from his province to the Court of Fran- 
cis L, and petitioned for leave to visit the distant shores 
and to add new territories to his sovereign's realm, he was 
received with favor and warmly* encouraged. By a com- 
mission, dated January 15, 1540, he was appointed Lord 
of " Norimbegue " and viceroy of all the immense terri- 
tories contained within that mysterious province. (Char- 
levoix, Nouv. Tr. I. p. 1 13). No boundaries were pre 



LOST LANDS. 221 

scribed, but no mention also was made of definite locali- 
ties, save " the gulf and the banks of the river of St. 
Lawrence." Jacques Cartier was made the nobleman's 
Captain-general, and sailed with a fleet of five vessels a 
year before the new Viceroy. It was a motley crew he took 
with him to become citizens of Norimbega or Arambec, 
as it was frequently called ; jail-birds for the greater part, 
and the very refuse of decaying inland towns and the slums 
of seaports. Nor were RobervaPs followers apparently of 
better character; for he faithfully acknowledges that 
during the only winter he spent in the new province, one 
had to be hanged, and others " women as well as men " 
to be whipped. After a short twelvemonth's experience 
the mariner of St. Malo abandoned the enterprise ; the 
Picard also remained but a year in his unpromising vice- 
royalty. He returned to France, preferring the modest 
competency of his castle in the province to the vice-royal 
splendor in his Northern dominion. Once more, how- 
ever, his ambition was aroused, and placing himself at the 
head of a large number of adventurers, he sailed a second 
time for the New World. But if he did not share the fate 
of Verrazzani, who, we are told, " was the first to discover 
Canada, but for his sins, since the savages eat him " (La 
Hontan, Voy. I, p. 5), he was equally unfortunate. He 
was never heard of again, and the mystery that shrouds 
his end, fell like an impenetrable veil upon his province 
also. Norimbega disappeared with him from all records 
and charts, Hugo Grotius alone referring to it once more 
by the rather vague designation that it must have been 



222 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

situated " in Estotiland, because discovered by the Nor- 
wegians." Thus Norirabega also became one of our many 
forgotten lands. 

It only shared, however, in the ungrateful treatment it 
thus received at the hands of men, the fate of previous 
and much older lands, which must have formed part at 
least of its territory. For it is well known that long before 
Frenchman or Englishman ever thought of crossing the 
Atlantic to explore the New World of the West, bold 
Northmen had already more than once sailed in their 
open boats through the stormy sea from Norway to Ice- 
land and from Iceland to Greenland. Eric the Red, the 
first of their race who settled down in that portion of our 
Continent, had next sent his bold son, Leif the Lucky, 
with twenty-five well-chosen companions to the distant 
coast, and these had, in the year 1,000, fixed their abode 
there, building log-houses and tilling the ground. One of 
the men was a German, called Tyrker, and coming as he 
did from the vine-covered banks of the Rhine^ he was 
struck with the grapes that ripened on every hillside and 
on many a lofty tree. So they called the new country 
Vinland, precisely as at a much later period other dis- 
coverers gave to the well-known island farther South the 
name it still bears : Martha's Vineyard. The Eastern 
portion of the Continent had, however, already been called 
Markland, or W T ood Land, and continued to bear that 
name in the records of all discoverers till a late day. 
While it is surmised that these two names referred to the 
regions now forming Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 



LOST LANDS. 223 

and the Island of Nantucket to the East, nothing certain 
is known about Vinland or Markland, and great is the 
zeal and violent are the polemics of the two parties, of 
which one stands up stoutly for the early discoverers and 
the importance of the two countries, while the other smiles 
skeptically at the accounts of Eric the Red, and Leif the 
Lucky, and denies that their new homes in America are 
forgotten lands — because they never existed ! 

The same mystery which thus concealed the Eastern- 
most parts of our Continent for centuries from the eager 
eyes of Europe, seems for a time at least to have barred 
the way to an accurate knowledge of the Northwest. Here 
also a half-fabulous, half-mythical name, Ania, meets us, 
of which no accurate record is left, no explanation is given. 
All we know is, that on the very oldest maps of America 
the Northwestern part of the great continent is called 
Ania, and that the long-sought water-channel to the North 
of our land was hence known as the Anian Straits. It is 
one of the most interesting features of our early annals 
that they present to us an almost uninterrupted series of 
efforts to discover a way by water that should allow ves- 
sels to go directly from Europe to distant Cathay. Men 
of indomitable energy and full of confidence in final tri- 
umph started, ever and anon, from the first voyages of 
" John Kabotts, the Venician," in 1498, to the last days 
of Franklin and Bellot, to discover these fabulous Anian 
Straits. During all the time that lies between Gaspar 
Cortereal, the renowned Portuguese navigator, who in 
1499 explored the coasts of Labrador, who claimed to have 



224 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

sailed through a narrow channel, westward from the 
Atlantic, into another great sea communicating with the 
Indian Ocean, and the sad hour when the brave French 
sailor paid with his life for the honor of having discovered 
an open passage, the shores of Northern seas have been 
lined with the bleaching bones of hapless searchers after 
these Anian Straits. 

At last the hero came that was not only to discover 
the truth about these fabulous regions, but actually to 
become the first crowned king of a portion of our Conti- 
nent. This was Sir Francis Drake, who had, from a 
cabin-boy, risen to become the pride of England, the 
founder of her naval greatness, and the terror of Spain ; 
whose fleets he destroyed and whose commerce he 
ruined. Having seen, from a mountain top, at Darien, 
the placid waters of the Pacific, he determined to explore 
those seas, in which the flag of the Tudors had never yet 
appeared. He left England, on this great enterprise, in 
December, 1577, roved through the Atlantic, pillaged the 
Spanish possessions in Peru and Chili, and in early 
Spring of the following year reached the coasts of Cali- 
fornia. On the 17th of June, " after much buffeting, it 
pleased God to send him into a fair and good bay, within 
38 degrees of the line," (probably the port of Bodega) 
and here he determined to rest and refit. During the 
next five weeks he succeeded in making such an impress- 
ion upon the natives, that they came in crowds, and with 
all the powers of persuasion they possessed, arid offering 
all the riches they thought might be tempting to the great 



LOST LANDS. 225 

stranger, besought him to remain as their king. Drake 
" thought not meet to reject the crown ; thereupon, in the 
name, and to the use of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, he 
took the crown, sceptre and dignity of the country in his 
own hands, wishing that the riches and treasures thereof 
might be so conveniently transported for the convenience 
of the kingdom at home." The scene must have been 
ludicrous in the extreme, and the naive description of it 
in Sir F. Drake's voyage, by Francis Pretty (Hakluyt, 
1589,) is full of interest and unconscious humor. There 
was the great captain in all the pomp and circumstance 
of a commander of those days, superbly equipped in 
English harbors, and enormously enriched by a royal 
galleon, laden with plate, which he had recently taken ; 
around him his companions-in-arms, men of noble and 
gentle birth, and all the picturesque outfittings of an age 
that loved splendor and delighted in gorgeous colors. 
On the other side a tribe of naked savages, adorned only 
with the rude emblems of barbarous warfare, and decked 
with the teeth, the claws and the wings of birds and 
beasts, offering the barren sovereignty of a wretched 
coastland to a being revered as a powerful god. It is 
difficult to imagine how the great captain and his illus- 
trious companions could have submitted with patient en- 
durance to the strange ceremonies and uncouth worship 
of the wild Indians; nevertheless, the whole solemn 
pageant of a coronation was duly performed, and Drake, 
having assumed the dignity and title of Hioh— whatever 
that may have meant in California— bestowed upon his 
15 



226 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

new kingdom the name of New Albion. Pillars were 
erected on the coast, emblazoned with the arms of Old 
England, and bearing high-sounding inscriptions, which 
proclaimed to the world the sovereignty of its Queen 
over these regions, and the rights then formally vested in 
the great naval commander. 

Giving no heed to the fact that the Spaniards had 
many years before already discovered, and even partially 
occupied the coast of New California, he claimed by the 
act of discovery the right to name that vast and magnifi- 
cently rich country, which in course of time will, no 
doubt, become New America, and make of the Pacific 
Ocean the Mediterranean of a coming age. In vain did 
the Spaniards loudly protest ; in vain did cautious writers 
allude to previous records ; New Albion it was and re- 
mained for several centuries. When Sir F. Drake, hav- 
ing failed to discover in his turn the long-sought open 
passage to the North of America, had sailed around the 
globe and received, a newly-made knight, the Queen as 
his guest, on board his ship in the harbor of Plymouth, 
he could proudly lay at her feet the crown of a kingdom 
on the Pacific, and greet her as the sovereign of New 
Albion. Can we wonder that the English clung to the 
name, in the face of all better rights, and despite the most 
vehement protestations? An order of the admiralty, 
dated June 6, 1776, and directing Cook to proceed to the 
coast of New Albion, which he was to reach in the lati- 
tude of 45 degrees, shows by the application of that name 
to the north-western coast of America, that Great Britain 



LOST LANDS. 227 

had no intention yet to give up her rights to the region 
which she claimed to have been acquired by Drake nearly 
two hundred years before. It is true that the name, though 
not yet disused, had in the meantime fallen back into the 
realms of myth : the distant unknown region, utterly cut 
off from all intercourse with England, had long since 
faded away into the dim distance, and had thus become 
the favorite scene of extraordinary adventures and Uto- 
pian romances. Bacon placed there his Utopia, and 
Brobdignag, if we rely on the statements of that veracious 
discoverer, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, must have been in 
New Albion. 

The romantic country is now a forgotten land ; in its 
place have arisen Oregon, recalling by its melodious 
name the Origans or sweet marjoram that grows on the 
banks of the great river of the West (Darby's Gazetteer), 
and Washington, ready to transmit to the Pacific empire 
the name of America's greatest son. 

As there are few great revolutions in history that have 
not had their mimic counterpart in some tempest in a 
teapot, and few great names without their burlesque echo 
in low life, so New Albion, also, has had its caricature 
and mocking counterfeit in the annals of our early days. 
Brave Captain John Smith, trying to describe in his un- 
couth, but surprisingly accurate manner, the lands of the 
new continent, and especially of the regions of New 
England, which owe to him their name and their exist- 
ence, says quaintly : " New England is opposite to Nova 
Albyon, in the South Sea. New France, off it, is North- 



228 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

ward, Southwardes is Virginia, and all the adjoining 
countries, with New Granada, New Spain, New Andalu- 
sia, etc." — (a Description of New England, 1616). Little 
did he imagine, at that day, that another New Albion — 
not on the South Sea — would, ere long, come and claim, 
not only the privileges of a neighbor, but even the right 
of ownership to part of his beloved Virginia. And yet, 
it was only in 1648 that a pamphlet appeared, entitled : 
" A Description of the Province of New Albion, in 
North America," which in its more modest introductory 
pages speaks of New Albion and New Scotland as parts 
of Virginia, and in other places, more unreservedly 
claims nothing less than " all America ' ; for the new 
province. The ambitious author, bearing himself the 
high-sounding names of Beauchamp Plantagenet, with 
ineffable arrogance, transforms a simple and unpretend- 
ing country squire, Sir Edmund Plowden, of Shropshire, 
in England, unto a high and mighty Earl Palatine, and a 
certain strip of land, being in possession of rightful 
owners, and under colonial government, into that Pala- 
tine's great " Province of New Albion." The claim ap- 
pears at first sight so preposterous, and the existence of 
the magnificent domain is so entirely fictitious, that many 
careful writers have held the whole to be either a mere 
myth or a deliberate he ax. There can be, however, no 
doubt that the province once existed — at least upon 
parchment — for it is frequently mentioned in historical 
works, in Burke's History of the Commoners, etc., and 
at least referred to in Beverly's History of Virginia (I, p. 



LOST LANDS. 229 

49). From these statements it would appear that Sir 
Edmund Plowden really received through the favor of his 
patron, the famous Lord Stafford, and in his name as Lord- 
Lieutenant of Ireland, a patent under the Gfeat Seal, 
assigning to him certain lands in Northern Virginia, 
" sometimes called New Canaan," on the shores of Dela- 
ware Bay, and probably lying somewhere near the present 
town of Salem, in the State of New Jersey. To the 
grant was added the title of Earl Palatine, with all the 
rights and powers of creating provincial, feudal and local 
barons, knights, bachelors, etc., the whole to be held from 
King Charles I., " as of our crown of Ireland in capite." 
The patent, duly recorded, is dated June 21, 1634; but 
for many years no efforts seem to have been made to 
profit by its privileges, the Earl Palatine being apparently 
too poor to fit out a vessel for himself, and the distant 
province too uninviting to attract public enterprise. At 
last he sailed with a number of emigrants to his new 
province, but having neglected to provide himself with a 
pilot, he was unable to find the entrance to Delaware 
Bay, however wide open its magnificent waters may gen- 
erally be to new-comers, and saw himself forced to land 
in Virginia. Here more misfortunes must have befallen 
him, for we are told in Winthrop's History of New Eng- 
land, that he " lost the estate he had brought over, and 
all his people scattered from him." The poor Earl Pala- 
tine inpartibus infidelium, after seven years' painful wait- 
ing, made his way successfully to Boston, probably never 
once seeing his lordly domain, and there remained for 



23O ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

some time, till a vessel took him back again to his hered- 
itary acres in Shropshire. This melancholy failure, how- 
ever, did not prevent his faithful follower, Mr. Beauchamp 
Plantagenet, from describing in his book, most minutely, 
the beauties and wonders of the new Palatinate, with all 
the noble seats of the princely owner, nor did he fail to 
enumerate the Lords and Barons whom his great chief- 
tain had made by virtue of his patent — beginning with 
wise charity at home and bestowing most gorgeous titles 
and surnames upon all of his children, down to a noble 
baron, crying lustily in his cradle. And thus ended the 
Province of New Albion. The Swedes, who were mainly 
settled on the lands it embraced, were never dispossessed 
and probably never even heard of the attempted transfer 
of their allegiance. Virginia was already great enough 
to treat the " defalcation " of her territory, as it was then 
called, with contemptuous silence, and the new country, 
in fact, never had any existence at all except upon paper. 
A last faint echo of its early pretensions was heard in the 
year 1784, when a certain Charles Varlo came over from 
England, and, claiming to act as representative of the 
" Earl of Albion," threatened to institute legal proceed- 
ings against all "trespassers upon the province." Phila- 
delphia lawyers, formidable to English authorities, from 
the days of Andrew Hamilton's pleadings in Leisler's 
case, must have appeared too threatening to him, since 
nothing more was heard of agent or principal, and New 
Albion, of the Atlantic, also, may fairly be considered as 
one of our lost lands. 



LOST LANDS. 23 1 

The peaceful settlers whom the ambitious Earl Pala- 
tine was so anxious to dispossess of their modest homes 
were, however, only spared for a time. They might re- 
sist a single claimant, supported only by the portentous 
sound of a royal Patent ; but they were hopelessly lost, 
when a nation's power was arrayed against them, and the 
question became one not of right but of might, and thus 
their efforts to create a New Sweden by the side of New 
England were rendered abortive. 

As long ago as the year 1590 an eminent and enter- 
prising merchant of the Netherlands, named William 
Ussellinx, had conceived the idea of a West India Com- 
pany, which was to acquire lands, establish towns, and 
profit by active trade on our Continent. He had been a 
great traveller in his day, living some years in Portugal, 
Castile and the Azores, and ever watchful of commercial 
openings, had shrewdly observed the course of trade. 
But in those days the dangers of such an undertaking 
were still too appalling, and he did not succeed in his 
native land. Leaving Amsterdam in a passion, he found 
himself, in the course of his wanderings, in distant 
Sweden, and like all men of large views and liberal impul- 
ses, was filled with great and sincere admiration for the 
noblest of Sweden's Kings, Gustavus Adolphus. To 
him, therefore, he addressed himself with his favorite 
scheme, cherished in his heart and never abandoned for 
full thirty years, and fortunately, he obtained not only a 
hearing, but found a willing listener. Those were days 
when all Europe was filled with a desire to share in the 



232 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

rich harvest of colonization, which had already added so 
much to the power and the prestige of Spain, England 
and France ; and the enthusiasm, with which such enter- 
prises in a new world were then pursued, had gradually 
reached, also, the northernmost regions of Europe. There 
was another motive, however, in the heart of the pious 
king ; he was already preparing to abandon his throne, 
the land of his fathers, and all that was dear to him upon 
earth, in order to prove, with his life's blood, his devotion 
to religious liberty, and thus he was naturally led to look 
beyond the great sea for a home, where persecuted breth- 
ren might find a shelter, and the weary be at rest. He 
promptly ordered, therefore, an examination of the pro- 
posal, and as there was found a tract of land lying 
between the colony of Virginia and New England, to 
which no European power had as yet laid any claim, he 
determined to take possession, and to found there a new 
and free Sweden. A charter was promptly drawn up 
and signed, but unfortunately the king's affairs had be- 
come, in the meantime, so pressing, and the Polish war 
now engaged his attention so closely, that nothing more 
was done at that time. Usselinx, however, who had 
waited well-nigh a lifetime, could afford to be patient, 
and at last his perseverance was rewarded. The king 
had, only a few days before his tragic death on the battle- 
field of Lutzen, recommended the scheme to his wise 
chancellor Oxenstiern, as " the jewel of his kingdom," 
and the latter found time, while commanding the armies 
in Germany, controlling the cabinets of Europe, and 



LOST LANDS. 233 

ruling a kingdom at home, to attend to the humble mer- 
chant and his far-seeing plans. Great was the joy of the 
good people of Stockholm, when, on a bright autumn 
day, in 1637, the two stout vessels, Griffin and Key of 
Kalmar, left the rock-bound harbor amid loud shouts and 
devout prayers, while from all the heights resounded joy- 
ous shouts, and the bells were ringing merrily from 
church and chapel. But greater still was, no doubt, the 
silent joy of the gray-haired man on deck of the Griffin, 
who saw, at last, the wish of his life on the point of 
being realized, and felt his heart glow with delight at the 
idea of founding a new empire on distant shores. 

"The consequences of this design," the great chan- 
cellor had said, when extending the chafter to Germany, 
"will be favorable to all Christendom, to Europe, to the 
whole world." And he, Usselinx, was the chosen instru 
ment of Providence, to carry out this great enterprise. 
But by his side stood another Dutchman, very different 
in character, and actuated by motives of purely personal 
interest. This was Peter Minnits, once pompously styl- 
ing himself Governor of New Netherlands, but in reality 
nothing more than an humble factor of the East India 
Company for their trade with the Indians, and the trans- 
mission of beaver skins to their store-houses in Holland. 
In the strife of factions, and probably from want of ca- 
pacity, he had lost his place and had been expelled from 
the colony. Hearing in Germany of the proposed expe- 
dition, he had promptly hastened to Sweden, and with 
ineffable impudence offered himself as a guide and an 



234 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

agent to the new company, though fully aware of their 
purpose to occupy the land and appropriate the trade, 
which his countrymen claimed as their own, and which 
he had once been sent to protect as their governor. The 
two ships, taking the Southern passage, did not reach our 
shores till early in the following year, and there is some- 
thing indescribably touching in the enthusiasm with which 
these simple children of the North, reduced by a long, 
tedious voyage, greeted the first sight of land. In their 
delight they called Cape Inlopen, the interior Cape of 
Delaware Bay, Paradise Point, and with great joyousness 
landed on the banks of the mighty river. The little 
company of Swedes and Fins adopted, at once, the policy 
prescribed by their pious king, and their wise minister, 
which has marked them among all the colonists that have 
ever come to this land ; they bought all the lands they 
wanted from the Indians, paying scrupulously for them, 
now with a piece of baize and now with a keg of nails, 
always drawing up a paper to be signed by the natives 
with a beaver or a mountain, a bow or an arrow, as their 
token might be ; and they refused to have slaves, " for," 
their first charter said, " the Swedish nation is laborious 
and intelligent, and surely we shall gain more by a free 
people with wives and children." Finding the land un- 
occupied, and buying it for a fair price from the rightful 
owners, they defied the protests of their Dutch neigh- 
bors ; besides, the name of Sweden stood high in those 
clays, and her children were respected and feared wher- 
ever they appeared. 



LOST LANDS. 235 

So they settled in what is now Delaware, from the 
South Cape to the falls of the river near Trenton, and 
built a Fort, which they named Christiana, from "the 
sweet little jasmine-bud in the royal conservatory," the 
ittle girl who was then seated upon the throne. A Swe- 
dish architect, Peter Lindstrom, laid out a town ; trade 
sprang up with the Lenne-Lenapes, an iron mill was erec- 
ted after the manner they had learnt in their own rich 
mines at home, and God's blessing rested visibly upon the 
infant colony. More settlers came over from Sweden and 
Finland, allured by the reports of the loveliness of the 
New World, where food was abundant and poverty 
unknown ; a second supply, under Governor Prints, 
reached the New Swede River in 1642, and " New Sweed- 
land," as Holme calls it naively in his history (Stock- 
holm, 1702), on the New Swede River, the Delaware, 
began to expand and to prosper. They had ere long 
another Gottenburg and Elsinburg to remind them of 
their homes in Sweden, and the Norwegians among 
them built a new Bergen. Moreover, they soon be- 
came quite famous in Europe as well as in the New 
World, as the only people to whom the Odium Theologi- 
cum was unknown. Catholic and Protestant, Puritan and 
Cavalier were all treated with the same simple cordiality, 
and welcomed if they came to settle among the Swedes. 
But of all the forlorn and persecuted believers of that 
day none more gratefully acknowledged this truly Chris- 
tian practice than the poor Quakers, who in those days 
bid fair to rival the Jews in their homeless condition and 



236 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

sad sufferings. In Massachusetts the mere fact of 
belonging to " the cursed sect of heretics " exposed them 
to the penalty of being immediately sent to the House of 
Correction, to be whipped with twenty stripes, and to be 
kept at hard labor till they could be transported. Pious 
Cotton Mather added the privilege of having their heads 
shaved, and of being compelled to attend congregational 
"meetings under the penalty of "five shillings for each 
offence." In Maryland, according to an ordinance passed 
as late as the year 166 1, they might be apprehended and 
whipped by any justice of the peace. Virginia charac- 
teristically punished them with a fine of 5,000 lbs. of 
tobacco, while New York threatened immediate " impris- 
onment and flagellation." Among the Swedes only were 
the poor Friends sure of being not only tolerated, but 
cordially received and hospitably entertained. 

Thus New Sweden became so important, thanks to 
the great name Sweden then enjoyed throughout the 
world, and thanks to the rapid increase of the colony 
itself, that at one time it actually threatened to over- 
shadow its two great competitors for colonial greatness. 
So it would at least appear from the remarkable state- 
ment we find in an old French writer, who adds to his 
description of New France the words; "To the South 
West lies Virginia, which jointly with New Holland was 
formerly known by the name of New Sweden ! " (L. 
Hennepin, Nouv. Decouv, II. p. 170.) 

This great and unexpected success soon excited 
envy and bitter enmity ; besides, the infant colony was 



LOST LANDS. 237 

dangerously hemmed in between two powerful neigh- 
bors — the English in Virginia to the South, and the Dutch 
of New Amsterdam to the North, to say nothing of the 
boisterous claims of New Albion and the threatening 
plans of the great Quaker. When the struggle came, 
there was little doubt as to the end. The Dutch, most 
deeply interested in the trade of the " tobacco of Vir- 
ginia and the beaver skins of the Schuylkill," and irri- 
tated by the quiet but active industry of the new set- 
tlers, determined to drive them out and thus to rid them- 
selves of formidable rivals. 

The struggle was brief and bloodless j but a sad 
disappointment to the Swedish people at home, who thus 
saw the only Colony they had ever planted destroyed at 
a single blow, and a great grief to the Swedish settlers, 
who had lived in happy peace with all their neighbors 
and were little prepared for the storm that swept over 
them. It was but a year after the first Swedish deed 
drawn up in Stockholm had been read once more, for 
confirmation, to a large assembly of Indians at Tinicum, 
a fort on an island in the river near Philadelphia, in 
which New Swedeland's boundary lines were carefully 
explained. The good people of the Colony had been 
deeply touched by the strong emotions which the Indians 
had shown in face and gesture, as the names of the 
original signers were mentioned one by one — now bright- 
ening up and uttering low sounds of delight as the living 
were called, and now bowing their heads in mute sorrow, 
as the reading recalled the memory of the departed. 



238 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

For not even William Penn's Friends ever lived with the 
natives in fuller sympathy or closer brotherhood. A 
little army of six hundred men from " below Breucklen," 
under famous Old Silverleg, as Governor Stuyvesant 
was frequently called, came sailing up the broad Dela- 
ware bent upon conquest. This was in September, 1655, 
and before the month had ended, every Swedish fort had 
surrendered without an attempt at resistance, and there 
was an end of New Sweden. 

If the colony which connects our New World with the 
icy regions of Scandinavia is one of our lost lands, the 
Swedes themselves have yet left their mark almost indeli- 
bly behind them. A number, it is true, unwilling to live 
under their new and unpopular masters, went back to 
their native land, but many also took the oath of allegiance 
to the States-General and remained fondly clinging to 
their speech and their faith. As late as 1749, Kalm, the 
great botanist, found Rapaapo inhabited by Swedes only, 
not a single Englishman or foreigner living among them, 
so that they had preserved their vernacular unchanged 
and unmixed (Travels II. p. 28). Nor ought it to be for- 
gotten that the great proprietor of Pennsylvania actually 
purchased the site of his city of Brotherly Love from these 
Swedish brothers, called Soen's Soener, whom he found it 
a difficult task to move from their simple, but endeared 
homes. There were no less than three Swedish churches 
there when Penn first came to his new province (Proud's 
Pa., I. p. 204), and one of these, a wretched old building, 
standing in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia, was relig- 



LOST LANDS. 239 

iously preserved for a hundred years later, as a memorial 
of the happy days of New Sweden. 

It is but natural to ask, who were these proud six 
hundred, who under their commander Stuy, as he is con- 
temptuously called by the English captain to whom he 
succumbed in turn, who thus came and with the strong 
hand, in the face of law and of justice, destroyed a fair 
colony, and added one more to the list of lost lands ? 
They were the men of a sister colony, which only a few 
years later was to fall by the sword even as they had con- 
quered the poor handful of Swedes with the sword. For 
New Netherlands, also, a great and powerful province, 
the dread of New England and the terror of the Indians, 
was soon to be stricken from the roll of our colonies and 
to be forgotten after- a few generations. There is a 
melancholy interest in the utter oblivion which had fallen 
upon the early Dutch days, eclipsed as they were by the 
vast energy and rapid increase of the English rule that 
followed their quiet happiness. We all know how the 
bold Italian sailor, John Verrazzani, under orders from 
Francis I., set out with a single caravel to discover new 
lands and earn new fame. His brave little vessel, the 
Dolphin, having " the good hap of a fortunate name," 
carried him safely across the wide ocean, and in March, 
1524, brought him, the first European, to the islands that 
border the shores of North Carolina. Thence he sailed 
up and down our coast, and in the course of his wander 
ings entered a noble harbor, anchored there to make 
soundings, noticed its vast 'size and great safety, and after 



2/J.O ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

casting covetous eyes at what appeared to be silver in the 
hillsides of New Jersey, and giving the natives the first 
taste of their future curse, Aquavitae, sailed away again, 
leaving the magnificent bay to an undisturbed rest of 
nearly eighty years. No name has been handed down to 
us belonging to this early voyage (Hakluyt III. 360) 
save one, the oldest of all American names, and full of 
sweet memories of the beautiful mother of King Francis. 
Verrazzani bestowed upon an island, reminding him of 
Rhodes, but now known as Block-Island, the name of 
Louise. We all know, in like manner, how Henry Hudson, 
abandoned by the English, and having made two voyages 
in vain, though battling manfully against the icepacks off 
the North Cape, had entered the service of the Dutch 
East India Company, and on the 25 th of March, 1609, 
started boldly for the formidable regions of Nova Zem- 
bla ; how, driven by fierce west winds to Newfoundland, 
he had sailed down as far as Charleston harbor, and then 
turning once more Northward, had, by sheer accident, 
discovered Delaware Bay ; how, finally, on the 3rd of 
September, he had cast anchor " at two cables' length 
from shore," within Sandy Hook, and there " rode in five 
fathoms oosy ground, and saw many salmons and mullets 
and rays very great." But we are apt to forget that, as 
his discovery was the result of mere chance, so it also 
ended, as far as he was concerned, in utter failure. He 
sailed up in his famous Half Moon, following the wind- 
ings of the noble river that still bears his name, full of 
hope that, at last, he had found the much-coveted North- 



LOST LANDS. 241 

west passage, which was to give him access to Western 
seas and thus lead him straight to Cathay j but, when he 
found the river growing smaller and the soundings more 
shallow, he returned with grief in his heart and bitterly 
disappointed. Fortunately there were shrewd and cun- 
ning men at home who foresaw the full value of the 
newly-discovered land, and soon more vessels were sent 
out and settlements were made at the mouth and on the 
banks of the river. When Hudson passed the noble 
gateway of the Narrows and thus first entered upon the 
waters of the magnificent stream, he heard it called 
Mahicannibuck by the Indians, a name meaning, River 
of the Mountains. On the next voyage the Dutch called 
it Mauritius, in honor of the Stadtholder of the Nether- 
lands, Prince Maurice, who favored the new colony. A 
few years later, in 1614, Adrian Block, one of the boldest 
Dutch navigators of those days, when there was no lack 
of fearless sailors on every sea of our globe, had filled 
his good ship Tiger with bear skins and was about to re- 
turn to Amsterdam, when a fire reduced his vessel to a 
wreck and forced him to seek shelter on land. The 
December snows had already fallen, and there was thick ice 
in all the coves. But he was not to be daunted, and en- 
couraging his men by cheerful words and brave example, 
he soon succeeded in building a few rude log huts and a 
storehouse on Manhattan Island (Beaver Street recalls 
the place and the purpose), erected a fort in the centre, 
and there spent the winter— not in idleness though, for 
with his good men he built a new vessel, and before the 
16 



242 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

Spring blossoms appeared, his "Onrust"was ready to 
take him away. He never returned, but " Unrest " has 
ever since been a name well deserving of its early con- 
nection with the great city. Thus it was that when Sir 
Thomas Dales and Captain Argall came up from distant 
Virginia to look into the beautiful harbor, they could 
find there, "on Manhatas' Island, in Hudson's River, 
four houses built, and a pretended Dutch Governour, 
under the West India Company's of Amsterdam part or 
share." The name of Manhatas did not, however, then 
appear for the first time. An unknown author goes even 
so far as to ascribe it to the days when Verrazzani ap- 
peared there for the first time, and states that it meant 
the Place of Drink, in allusion to the Aqua Vitae given 
to the natives. In Neal's New England the island is 
called Manhanatoes, while Burke speaks of Monadas as 
the "Indian name for the island whereon New York 
stands." (Va. II. p. 150.) A letter, written March 9, 
1627, by the "Governour of the Dutch Plantation at 
Hudson's River," is dated " at the Manhattas in the Fort 
Amsterdam," and here, in 1656, the Dutch began their 
town of New Amsterdam (Proud, Pa. p. no), which ere 
long was by its wise liberality and kind-hearted toleration 
to become equally obnoxious to Puritans, Churchmen and 
Romanists, " a cage of unclean birds," as it was con- 
temptuously called — and sometimes is called even now 
for very dissimilar reasons. 

The little colony, with its beautiful harbor below, and 
Fort Orange above, on the great river, soon grew and 



LOST LANDS. 243 

prospered till it became, in the enthusiastic words of one 
of the early settlers, " het schoonste land dat men met 
voeten betreden kan " — (the fairest land on which men can 
set foot). But if its growth was rapid, its life was short. 
With that supreme disregard of the rights of others, 
which is one of the most striking characteristics of the 
Stuarts, Charles II. bestowed, in 1664, the whole of what 
he was pleased to call Nova Belgia, on his brother, the 
Duke of York, and prompt measures were taken to ob- 
tain possession. In the quaint words of a contemporary 
writer : " Four commissioners were sent over, who, march- 
ing with 300 red cotes to the Manhadaes or Manhatoes, 
took from the Dutch their chief town, then called New 
Amsterdam, and on August 29 did turn out their Gouver- 
nour Hardkoppig Piet (Hardheaded Peter) though he 
was, and all the rest but those who did acknowledge 
subjection to the King of England, suffering them to 
enjoy their houses and estates as before." (A Prospect 
of New York, London, 1685.) It is true that Dutch re- 
mained the prevailing language down to the days of the 
Revolution, and that Holland contrived to be the nursery 
of the colony long after the conquest by the English, but, 
nevertheless, as New York soon caused New Amsterdam 
no more to be remembered, New Netherlands also very 
speedily was eclipsed by the new State and may fairly 
be looked upon as one of our lost lands. 

Nor are the Northern States, even steady New Eng- 
land, without their sad reminiscences of provinces that 
were carved out, and dominions that were projected only 



244 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

to leave a " name and nothing more " behind them. How 
few of us have ever heard of Muscongus, and yet the 
word has its important place in our history, and its most 
mournful tragedies besides, to touch our hearts. A great 
patent had been issued as early as the year 1629, con- 
cerning about a million of acres of land on the river 
Penobscot, with the river Muscongus on the south-west, 
" and extending ten leagues north-east of the Penobscot 
and ten leagues into the country." So large was this 
magnificent domain that it lay only partly within New 
England, while a portion extended into New France. It 
was known as the Waldo Patent, from the name of the 
proprietor, and as Muscongus, from the river on which 
it was mainly situated. When Charles II. created the 
province of Maine in favor of his brother, the Duke of 
York, the whole domain was absorbed in the new grant, 
but remained well known till the Revolution as Sagada- 
hock. At a later period an effort was made to revive 
the patent ; a joint-stock company was formed to have it 
surveyed, and to induce settlers to take possession ; but 
it was almost an unbroken wilderness, and only a few 
hundred Germans could be tempted, in 1739, to settle at 
Waldoborough, who were reinforced twelve years later by 
a considerable addition. As, however, the title to the 
land was contested in the courts, a large number of them 
left the Muscongus and went to Orangeburg, in South 
Carolina. These difficulties led to an effort made by 
Samuel Waldo, of Falmouth (now Portland), to secure a 
renewal of the patent ; he went to England for the pur- 



LOST LANDS. 245 

pose, and was successful. After his return to this coun- 
try he went, in 1759, with Governor Pownall and a party 
of friends and surveyors, to his lands, ascending the 
Penobscot to the head of tide water. When he had 
reached a point where he presumed the northern line of 
his patent was met, he exclaimed, surveying the ground : 
" Here is my bound !" and dropped dead on the spot. A 
leaden plate, on which the sad accident was recorded, 
was deposited in that place, and now marks the site of 
the city of Bangor. The patent soon passed into the 
hands of the Commonwealth and there was an end to 
the land of Muscongus. 

Another forgotten land lay almost adjoining the unfor- 
tunate Patent of Waldo. It had been granted in the earl- 
iest days of our existence by the great Council of that 
famous company established " at Plymouth in the county 
of Devon for planting, ruling and governing of New Eng- 
land in North America " (November, 1620). Men had 
flocked there already in crowds, years before, and the 
greatest among them had naively confessed the purpose 
of all their exertions. Captain John Smith, to whom New 
England owes its name, writes : " In the moneth of April, 
1614, with two ships from London, I chanced to arrive in 
New England, a part of Ameryca, at the Isle of Monahig- 
gan : our plot was there to take whales and make Tryalls 
of a Myne of Gold and Copper," (A Descr. of New Eng., 
16 16). Now, two members of this Great Council of Ply- 
mouth were ambitious to try a like experiment of estab- 
lishing colonies on their own responsibility, and for that 



246 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

purpose obtained several large tracts of land. The first, 
granted in May, 162 1, covered all the land from Maum- 
keag River, round Cape Ann to Merrimac River, and up 
these rivers to the farthest head ; this district they called 
Mariana ; but as no successful effort was made to settle 
it, the name soon disappeared from maps and charts, and 
was speedily forgotten. It was very different, however, 
with the grant which contemplated the erection of a prov- 
ince that should extend from Western Vermont through 
Upper Canada, over all the great lakes, and which, on 
this account, obtained in August, 1622, the name of Laco- 
nia. These regions were long thought to be rich in met- 
als, diamonds and precious stones, but here as everywhere 
else the bright glitter of gold was only used to allure the 
credulous and covetous, while men of sense engaged in 
this enterprise for the same simple but sound reason, which 
was the prime motive of many of the greatest ventures of 
that day. They knew the abundance of fish that could 
be obtained from ocean and lake alike, and in those days 
of frequent fasts and an enormous consumption of salted 
provisions, fish was an article of great importance, and 
sure to bring enormous profits. Hence, the ambition to 
earn great fame as a discoverer of new regions, the hope 
of ruling as absolute master over princely domains, and 
the eager desire to render signal services to a great sove- 
reign—these had all, no doubt, been powerful motives with 
the early navigators. But a more powerful inducement 
even, was the large profit to be made by engaging in fish- 
eries on new and untried ground. Ever since Cabot's 



LOST LANDS. 247 

voyage had made known to the world the almost marvel- 
lous abundance offish on the north-eastern shores of our 
Continent, these fishing-grounds have proved an irresisti- 
ble attraction to high and low. Before Columbus set foot 
upon the Western Continent, bold fishermen had been 
in our waters ; and the very first charter which passed 
under the Great Seal of England for the establishment of 
a colony in Newfoundland under Sir Henry Gilbert, men- 
tions this purpose expressly. The same motive brought 
Sir George Calvert, the Catholic, to his colony of Avalon, 
and induced the Lord Chief Justice of England with oth- 
ers, thirteen years before the Pilgrim Fathers came to 
Plymouth, to turn their eyes towards New England. 
Even with the latter the question of fisheries was of great 
importance, and now it assumed once more its most attrac- 
tive form, in alluring two shrewd members of the great 
Plymouth Company. One, Captain John Mason, a mer- 
chant and " sea-officer," had learned to value the advan- 
tage of such traffic while he was governor of a so-called 
"plantation " in Newfoundland-; he was now governor of 
New Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and became, as his 
neighbors and competitors continually called him, the 
" bugbear " of that State. The other was Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges of Ashton Phillips in the County of Somerset, but 
now not unfrequently styled the "Palatine of Maine.' , 
With all their influence, and with all their shrewdness, 
these two men found it, however, a difficult task to com- 
ply with the conditions of the patent, which required a 
prompt planting and settling of certain parts of the dis- 



248 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

trict. They had little help to hope for from their neigh- 
bors, with whom they differed in faith and policy. The 
two proprietors were poor, and in search of manors and 
provinces ; the other settlers had left their native land 
and tilled the soil of the New World, holding their lives 
in their hands, in order to secure equality of civil rights 
and religious privileges. Mason and Gorges were ardent 
monarchists and zealous Episcopalians ; their neighbors 
were almost uniformly republicans and Nonconformists. 
Neither Mariana nor Laconia ever prospered, therefore, 
and when the indefatigable Sir Ferdinando, after surren- 
dering his great New England patent, obtained in 1635 a 
new grant, and named the province New Somerset, he 
could indeed send out his nephew William Gorges to claim 
the lands, and hold a general court at Saco — but there 
the matter ended. The fact is, both men were plundered 
by their servants, cheated by their agents, and deserted 
by their tenants (I. Sullivan, Maine, p. 141). In vain 
had Laconia been divided and re-established as Maine, 
so called in honor of Henrietta Maria, the daughter of 
Henry IV., and wife of Charles I., because she held in 
her own right and as her private estate the province of 
" Meyne " in France, and as New Hampshire, a name 
derived from Hampshire in England, where Mason lived. 
After the death of the latter (Nov. 26, 1635,) his widow 
tried in like manner in vain to manage the magnificent 
domain. The costs exceeded, year after year, the reve- 
nues ; her servants and tenants, ordered to provide for 
their own welfare, divided the property out among them- 



LOST LANDS. 249 

selves in payment of arrears, and thus in a few years the 
superb estate was completely ruined. (Bancroft I. p. 328.) 
That the end was hastened by absurd efforts to establish 
a semblance of aristocracy in the province — " funny feu- 
dalities " they were called — need hardly be added. In 
1679 New Hampshire was formally severed from Massa- 
chusetts by Charles II., and although Mason's heirs long 
persisted in urging their claims, Laconia was soon, and 
has ever since remained, a lost land. 

The name of Lygonia is so much like that of Gorges 
and Mason's province, and has so long remained without 
any key to its original meaning, that many authors have 
supposed the two to be but modified forms of the same 
name. This suggestion appeared to be all the more for- 
cible as the lands of Laconia, and those of Lygonia were 
frequently misrepresented as identical. But a somewhat 
more careful examination shows clearly that the resem- 
blance of the two names is purely accidental. (I. Sulli- 
van, Maine, p. 268.) Lygonia was a district covering not 
less than forty square miles, and stretching from Harps- 
well to the Kennebeck, which was in 1630 set aside for the 
first colony of farmers. The land proved, howerer, unfit 
for such purposes ; soil and seasons were alike unpropi- 
tious, and the musket and hook and line alone profitable. 
Nothing was done, therefore, towards settling it, and in 
April, 1643, tne Council of Plymouth transferred the grant 
to Alexander Rigby, then known as a Counsellor-at-Law 
and a republican member of the Long Parliament, but 
afterwards appearing as Sir Alexander Rigby, the owner 



250 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

of the " Plough Patent of the Sagadahock." It conferred 
upon him, with the title to the land, all the powers of 
colonial government and the jurisdiction over the people 
dwelling on the banks of Saco River. He never ex- 
ercised these rights in person, but, as " President and 
Proprietor of the Province of Lygonia," he sent over 
agents to claim his lands, receive his rents and hold his 
courts. The people refused to acknowledge his right, and 
the claim was virtually abandoned ; much land, however, 
is to this day held in Maine by the numerous posterity of 
" Parson Jordan " through this owner of a province, and 
although Lygonia is a forgotten land, the legal effects of 
its early charter have never ceased to be felt in New 
England. 

At nearly the same time when these fruitless efforts 
were made in the North to establish provinces and create 
baronies, a name obtained in the far South a short-lived 
celebrity, which is now almost entirely forgotten. It ap- 
pears that, in 1630, Charles I., with his usual liberality in 
disposing of the property of others, bestowed upon his 
faithful Attorney-General, Sir Robert Heath, all the lands 
lying in America between the 31st and 36th degree, 
Northern Latitude — from sea to sea ! A glance at the 
map will show that perhaps on the whole earth no more 
magnificent domain could be found than the belt of 
States that is now contained in this truly royal gift. It 
was called, in honor of the king who bestowed it, Caro- 
lana ; but no settlement was ever attempted, and no 
claim even established, for many generations. Then, all 



LOST LANDS. 25 I 

of a sudden, a somewhat remarkable personage, who has 
played a very prominent part in our history, Dr. Daniel 
Coxe, appeared, and without much difficulty obtained (in 
1699) the opinion of the Attorney-General of England, 
that he was the true owner of the province of Carolana. 
Upon the strength of this official endorsement, and aided 
by his position as one of the proprietaries of New Jer- 
sey, the ambitious Doctor actually fitted out two explor- 
ing vessels to sound the waters of the Mississippi, and 
to make such discoveries as might be to his interest as 
owner of the vast inland territory. It was one of these 
ships, commanded by Barr, which met at the English 
Turn de Bienville, the French commander, September 10, 
1699, and was by him ordered to return and never to re- 
appear in the waters belonging to France. The precise 
limits of his province seem at no time to have been well 
known, for while, in 1650, E(dward) W(illiams), gent, 
published, in London, a work under the title of " Virginia, 
more especially the Southern part thereof Richly Truly 
Valued viz., the fertile Carolana and not less excellent Isle 
of Roanoke," Dr. Coxe himself entitled his book far more 
pretentiously: " A Description of the English Province 
of Carolana, by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the 
French called Louisiana, London, 1722." 

It is difficult to understand how the empty sound 
could have maintained itself so many years in print and 
public use, after the substance had long since disap- 
peared and new names had been substituted for the old 
designation. For in the meantime great and permanent 



252 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

changes had taken place in what might once have been 
Carolana. A brave mariner from the famous seaport of 
Dieppe, Jean Ribault, had, in 1562, come out with two 
ships, full of French Huguenots, and landing on the first 
day of the bonny month of May near a fair and large 
river, had called it the River May. Then, building a fort 
to protect himself against his formidable neighbors, the 
Spaniards in Florida, he had called it in honor of his 
King, Charles IX., " La Caroline." Thus the new name 
appeared for the first time in the annals of our history, 
in connection with an island in the noble bay of Port 
Royal. (De Thon. XL and IV., p. 531, ed. 1626.) He 
was followed, a year later, by Rene Laudonniere, another 
zealous Protestant, sent out by Admiral Coligny, who, 
landing in June, 1564, on the River May, called on the 
maps of those days the river Governador, had built there 
anew "Caroline" (Hakluyt III. 392), which became the 
scene of one of the most fearful massacres ever enacted 
on American soil. Six hundred Christian soldiers were 
there murdered in cold blood by Christian soldiers of 
another nation, "not because they were Frenchmen, but 
because they were heretics," as the fanatic Spaniards 
took care to inscribe over the exposed remains of their 
victims. Although the Spaniards called the bloody place 
San Mates, from St. Mathew's Day, on which the deed 
was done, the early name of Carolina was, ever after, re- 
tained in that locality, as well as in the charters and pub- 
lic documents of Charles L, and Cromwell (Oldmixon 
Hist. I, p. 458), and its use was renewed under Charles 



LOST LANDS. 253 

II. Already, in 1666, we are told, the "province was so 
called in honor of His Sacred Majesty that now is, 
Charles II. whom God preserve" — (A Brief Description 
of Carolina, in Carroll's Hist., Cole II. p. 10), and when, 
in 1727, the crown of Great Britain purchased both title 
and interest of the proprietaries of the province, and 
divided it into two provinces, nothing was more natural 
than to name them, without going back to the original 
name of Carolana, North and South Carolina. 

The Lost Lands of our Republic are, however, by no 
means confined exclusively to the earliest days of our 
colonial existence ; we have, at least, the name of one 
such forgotten land, which belongs to the period of our 
national history. In the year 1827 a map of the United 
States of America was published in London, on which a 
State was entered under the name of Franklin. This 
created, at first, no little wonder, as no such country had 
ever been known to exist, in spite of the great reverence 
felt for that great man. It appeared that the name was 
placed where Tennessee ought to have been, and thus it 
became evident that Franklin had been absurdly substi- 
tuted for Frankland. A glance at the early history of 
that State helped to explain the apparent riddle. When 
North Carolina ceded, by an Act of Assembly, her 
Western territory to the United States, about 1784, the 
Government, for various reasons, declined to accept the 
offer, and the law was repealed. The good people of its 
rejected district then met in convention, and declared 
their territory to be an independent State under the name 



254 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

of Frankland, chosing Colonel John Sevier as their first 
governor. The young State was, however, but short- 
lived, for the scruples of Congress were speedily over- 
come, and in the year 1787 the Legislature met for the 
last time; the State came to an end by simple want of 
vitality (Flint II. p. 31), and the name of Frankland is 
almost forgotten. 



THE END. 




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